RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/18/democratic-candidates-are-sorry-for-all-the-wrong-things/

We’d like to see candidates expressing dismay about the ways that government malfeasance or indifference threatens Americans’ health and safety every day. If they don’t, we should make them sorry on election day.

When presidential candidate Joe Biden began a campaign tour with the slogan, “No Malarkey” (a seeming oxymoron for a politician), the rallying cry was contradicted by his many apologies for past actions and positions. Had he fashioned his expedition as a “No Apologies” tour, he doubtless would have done far more to solidify his position as the most electable Democrat.

But he is not alone in lamenting past positions, actions, or inaction. One could imagine the consternation from Michael Bloomberg’s natural constituency when he felt the need to apologize for his support of “stop, question, and frisk” in New York City. Had Bloomberg simply said he should have made sure the policy was not taken to an extreme, as apparently was the case, he not only could have been truthful, but also avoided alienating those who recognized the positive impact the policy had in his city.

This presidential campaign has raised apologizing to a new art form. Much of it is no more than pandering. A simple explanation that one’s views have “evolved” would, we think, be far more effective. Instead, the pandering has spurred the legions of woke social justice warriors to even greater extremes of political correctness, harassment, and suppression of free speech.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2020/01/in-america-interfaith-bridge-building.html

According to a 2014 post on his apparently now discontinued blog here, Shi’ite Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, born in 1958 in the city of Al-Najaf in southern Iraq, completed his theological studies in Iran and his secular studies in England.

He afterwards went to live in the United States, where he was

“the former Director of the Abrahamic Initiative Program at St. John Cathedral in Denver. Currently he serves as a member of the Board of Religious advisers to the Denver Police.
He has received a number of awards for his bridge building and peace initiative, including, Faith to Faith Award for interfaith works. (2007), Martin Luther King Award for services in peace building (2007), the “Iliff/D.U Joint Ph.D. Award for Community Service(2007), and Honored with Congressional Record for working to end the war in Iraq. (2004) ….”

Fast foreward to 2020, and this paragon of interfaith harmony has been caught on video by Memri.org (whose YouTube site has, I believe, yet again been taken down by YouTube) in a speech on 3 Janiary at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan eulogising Qasem Soleimani and deploring his death, along with that of PMU Deputy Chairman Abu Mahdi] Al-Muhandis:

‘… He led a prayer for the souls of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis  and told the congregation that Soleimani had “brought hope to the marginalized [and] hatred and fear to the enemies of Islam.” He explained that Soleimani had been instrumental in keeping the Syrian regime in power despite American and Zionist attempts to destabilize it, in defending Iraq against ISIS alongside the PMU, and in ultimately defeating ISIS in Iraq, which Sheikh Kazerooni described as the “extended arm of American foreign policy.” He cited several examples from Islamic literature that speak of martyrdom as a virtuous act and added: “Let’s wait and see what happens next.”‘
https://www.memri.org/tv/iraqi-american-michigan-sheikh-kazerooni-eulogizes-soleimani-defended-iraq-zionist-american-isis-fear-enemies-islam/transcript

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/18/democrats-consume-themselves/

Eventually, I am going to get around to saying something about CNN’s hostility to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—evidenced, most recently, by its energetic exertions on behalf of the campaign to elect Elizabeth Warren at last Tuesday’s Democratic debate. And I’ll say something, too, about the delicious exhibition of angst-filled hand-wringing that said hostility occasioned in many precincts of the leftwing media.

First, however, since CNN apparently undertook its cheerleading for Warren in order to declare its feminist bona fides, I would like to pose a few questions as a sort of prolegomenon, what Kierkegaard, in another context, called a “preliminary expectoration.” 1) Why are feminists so unpleasant? 2) Why do they insist on whining instead of getting on with the task at hand? 3) Why do they tend to blame other people for their failures?

I do not propose to answer these questions—I am writing a column, not a book—but I would like to register my suspicion that part of the answer to all three is the dim, imperfectly articulated awareness that feminism’s real complaint is not with men or “the patriarchy” but with reality, with human nature.

To illustrate this, ask yourself questions such as why are there not special programs to recruit more men in engineering programs? Why aren’t grants available to encourage men to study math, or physics, or—when you come right down to it—to study anything? Why do politicians announce to general applause that this year there are more female representatives, or judges, or senators than ever before? Why is it thought to be a badge of virtue to have more women in this profession or that but the same is never claimed for men?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-trial-charges-lack-indictable-offense/

Thought experiment No. 1: Suppose Bob Mueller’s probe actually proves that Donald Trump is under Vladimir Putin’s thumb. Fill in the rest of the blanks with your favorite corruption fantasy: The Kremlin has video of the mogul-turned-president debauching himself in a Moscow hotel; the Kremlin has a bulging file of real-estate transfers through which Trump laundered racketeering proceeds for Putin’s favored mobsters and oligarchs; or Trump is recorded cutting a deal to drop Obama-era sanctions against Putin’s regime if Russian spies hack Democratic accounts.

Thought experiment No. 2: Adam Schiff is not a demagogue. (Remember, this is fantasy.) At the very first televised hearing, when he alleged that President Trump told Ukrainian president Zelensky, “I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent . . . lots of it,” Schiff was not defrauding the public. Instead, impeachment’s Inspector Clouseau can actually prove that Trump was asking a foreign government to manufacture out of whole cloth evidence that Vice President Biden and his son were cashing in on the former’s political influence (as opposed to asking that Ukraine look into an arrangement so objectively sleazy that the Obama administration itself agitated over what to do about it).

What do these two scenarios have in common, besides being fictional? Answer: If either of them were real, we’d already be talking about President Pence’s upcoming State of the Union address.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/18/america-is-deeply-divided-because-the-left-has-become-so-shallow/

Virtue signaling and luxury beliefs have driven us apart.

‘The country is hopelessly split,” says the November 2018 Intelligencer headline. According to The Hill, “Analyst says U.S. is most divided since Civil War.” Not quite a year ago, the History Channel reported that “some historians are also raising the alarm over division in the country.”

Naturally, President Donald Trump and everyone who voted for him are being blamed for the bitter breakup. But this is nothing more than the political left projecting on others the exact sort of behavior it’s engaged in.

An angry mixture of Democrats, “progressives,” socialists, and democratic socialists that makes up the political left is driven not by ideas but by its members’ desperate need to establish their social status. They want to be identified with those they consider “cool.” Think of Barack Obama, most high-profile Democratic politicians, celebrities, and media stars.

Yes, it’s a lot like high school.

The pursuit of social status is done through virtue-signaling (which “does not require actually doing anything virtuous … It takes no effort or sacrifice at all,” says the author of the term), and the holding of luxury beliefs. The former, artfully defined in Wikipedia as “the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness,” is used to confirm the latter, which has been described as ”ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class,” as well as “good public relations” that protect “you from being branded a bigot and being expelled from public society.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-never-ending-effort/

Efforts to remove Trump didn’t start with Ukraine. And won’t end there.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi waited to send impeachment to the Senate because she was waiting for her pens to arrive. The fancy commemorative ballpoints, featuring the speaker’s name engraved in gold, that Pelosi gave to colleagues at Wednesday’s engrossment ceremony quickly became the subject of mockery. Republicans saw them as emblematic of Democratic partisanship and triviality. “Nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs,” said Mitch McConnell. “As though this were a happy bill-signing instead of the gravest process in our Constitution.”

In Pelosi’s eyes, impeachment is something to celebrate. It’s more than an accomplishment. It’s the most significant product of the 116th Congress. What McConnell calls “the gravest process” has been the preferred means of Democrats to inflict maximum damage on President Trump and possibly remove him from office before the end of his term. The trial that begins on Tuesday has been years in the making. And the drive to impeach Trump won’t end when the verdict is rendered. He may well end up the first president to be impeached multiple times.

Maxine Waters has been chanting “impeach 45” since the spring of 2017. Representative Al Green introduced the first impeachment resolution that summer. Tom Steyer founded “Need to Impeach” that October. In November 2017 a group of House Democrats introduced additional articles of impeachment. The same thing happened in December 2017, January 2018, March 2019, May 2019, and July 2019. House Democrats accuse Trump of violating the emoluments clause, obstructing justice, associating with white nationalism, separating families of illegal immigrants, and more.

https://spectator.us/impeachment-bludgeon-armory-political-warfare/

A couple of days ago, members of the United States House of Representatives processed with all their accustomed pomp and dignity to file, formally, two articles of impeachment against President Trump. Yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts swore in the senators, who promised, scout’s honor, to deliberate with all the impartiality for which that great legislative body is known, i.e., to deliver their verdict almost exclusively on party lines. They didn’t say that, of course, because niceties must be preserved in these august chambers, especially when the television cameras are running, but everyone knows that is what is mean by ‘impartial’ in our political life today.

In other words, what we have here was a sterling instance of what the philosopher Yogi Berra called ‘déjà-vu all over again’. The Democrats have been talking about impeaching Donald Trump from the day he was elected. As Rep. Al Green memorably put it back in 2018,  ‘I’m concerned if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.’ And we can’t have that, can we?

Unless your name is Bill Kristol or Rachel Maddow, you know that the actual articles of impeachment are preposterous trumped up charges. One article alleges abuse of power, but what it describes is simply the exercise of power, which — pay attention class — is not the same thing. The contention is that the President withheld Congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine in order to bully the Ukrainians into digging up dirt of the Democrats’ leading Geritol candidate for president in 2020, Joe Biden. One problem with this fantasy is that everyone directly involved in the discussions denies anything like that happened. The whole contention is a rabbit hole that only political desperation could entice one to follow. (Another problem is that no one needs to dig up dirt on Joe Biden: he is a motorized, self-contained backhoe for scandal, digging up dirt on himself free and for nothing.)

The other article alleges ‘obstruction of Congress’. Never heard of that one? That’s OK, no one else had either. The Dems in the House were on a hasty war path (apologies to Elizabeth Warren) against Donald Trump: they wanted him gone, now, and he had the temerity to go to the courts to defend himself. Outrageous! Impeach for seeking legal counsel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-left-forgets-what-martin-luther-king-stood-for-11579304166?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

As the nation celebrates the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the progressive left will again seize the moment to twist the story of black Americans’ struggle, to the detriment of those who suffered most in that struggle. They’ll put all the attention on the oppressive conditions faced by black freedom fighters—what white racists did to them—rather than on their own spirit in fighting to gain equal rights under the law. Instead of celebrating blacks’ achievements and the progress made toward delivering on America’s promissory note, the left will transport yesterday’s real injustices into today’s false social-justice narrative, ignoring the principles that were so crucial to Dr. King.

History is full of inspiring examples of black people succeeding against the odds, including building their own schools, hotels, railroads and banking systems when doors were closed to them. According to the economist Thomas Sowell, “the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960.”

These accomplishments were made possible by a set of values cherished among the blacks of the time: self-determination, resiliency, personal virtue, honesty, honor and accountability. Dr. King understood that these values would be the bedrock for black success once true equality was won. As early as 1953, he warned that “one of the most common tendencies of human nature is that of placing responsibility on some external agency for sins we have committed or mistakes we have made.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15462/trump-had-right-to-withhold-ukraine-funds-gao-is

The Constitution allocates to the president sole authority over foreign policy (short of declaring war or signing a treaty). It does not permit Congress to substitute its foreign policy preferences for those of the president.

To the extent that the statute at issue constrains the power of the president to conduct foreign policy, it is unconstitutional.

Even if the GAO were correct in its legal conclusion — which it is not — the alleged violation would be neither a crime nor an impeachable offense. It would be a civil violation subject to a civil remedy, as were the numerous violations alleged by the GAO with regard to other presidents.

If Congress and its GAO truly believe that President Trump violated the law, let them go to court and seek the civil remedy provided by the law.

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has gotten the constitutional law exactly backwards. It said that the “faithful execution of the law” — the Impoundment Control Act—”does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those congress has enacted into law .” Yes, it does — when it comes to foreign policy. The Constitution allocates to the president sole authority over foreign policy (short of declaring war or signing a treaty). It does not permit Congress to substitute its foreign policy preferences for those of the president.

To the extent that the statute at issue constrains the power of the president to conduct foreign policy, it is unconstitutional.