RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/trump-rises-occasion-state-union-address-joseph-klein/

With Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, sitting stone-faced behind him for much of the time, President Donald Trump delivered a stirring, upbeat State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. “I say to the people of our great country and to the members of Congress: the state of our union is stronger than ever before,” the president declared.

President Trump followed Bill Clinton as the second president in U.S. history to have delivered his State of the Union address while impeachment proceedings against him were still ongoing. President Trump delivered his State of the Union address on the eve of his expected Senate acquittal of the two hopelessly partisan articles of impeachment that the House had rushed through its chamber and then delayed sending over to the Senate for weeks.

Like Bill Clinton, President Trump did not lob any recriminations against his political adversaries during his speech. There was no mention of the impeachment ordeal the Democrats had put him and the nation through. Instead, the president extolled what he called “The Great American Comeback” and projected optimism for America’s future.

“America is the place where anything can happen. America is the place where anyone can rise. Here, on this land, on this soil, on this continent, the most incredible dreams come true,” the president said. “The American age, the American epic, the American adventure has only just begun. Our spirit is still young. The sun is still rising. God’s grace is still shining. My fellow Americans, the best is yet to come.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/president_trumps_moving_statesmanlike_state_of_the_union_address.html

On Tuesday night, two very different events took place. The first was President Trump’s State of the Union speech, one that showcased incredibly good news about the state of America today, soaring rhetoric, and moving human interest stories. That’s what this post is about. The other event was the embarrassing Democrat temper tantrum, something that we’ll save for a less uplifting, but perhaps more amusing, post.

What touched the audience most during the speech were the interactions Trump had with his honored guests. There are too many of these interactions to retell for this post, but the following guests were especially moving:

There was Juan Guaido, the true president of Venezuela, who is being kept out of office by the tyrannical socialist, Nicholas Maduro. To Guaido, Trump had one message:

All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom! Socialism destroys nations. But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.

There was Kelli Hake, a war widow, and Gage, her 13-year-old son. Kelli’s husband and Gage’s father had died when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb that Qassem Soleimani had supplied. It was a vivid reminder of the havoc and death Soleimani sowed throughout the Middle East.

There was Jody Jones, whose brother, Rocky, was randomly shot to death by an illegal immigrant who was still on the streets thanks to California’s sanctuary state policy.

There was Iain Lanphier, an 8th grader who wants to be part of the new Space Force. What was really awesome, though, was that Iain was there with his great grandfather, 100-year-old Brigadier General Charles McGee, a Tuskegee Airman and career military pilot who fought in WWII, Koran, and Vietnam.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/nancy_pelosi_throws_a_public_temper_tantrum_and_other_democrat_misbehavior.html

Two different events played out on the floor of the House on Tuesday night. The first was President Trump’s powerful, moving, uplifting, and optimistic State of the Union speech. The second was the immature, arrogant, intemperate, and really disgusting temper tantrum in which Democrats indulged.

The most obvious sign of a complete mental breakdown on the left was Nancy Pelosi’s conduct during the speech. Her petulant behavior could not be missed because she was seated behind the president, to his left. Whenever the camera was on Trump, it was on Pelosi too.

Pelosi’s hissy fit first showed itself when Pelosi refused to give Trump the traditional formal introduction. Traditionally, Speakers of the House say that it is their “high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States.” Pelosi, however, in grudging and rushed tones, simply said, ‘Members of Congress, the President of the United States.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-impeachment-agonistes-11580860797?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Donald Trump delivered his third State of the Union address Tuesday night in one of the most paradoxical political scenes in memory. The President stood before the House Speaker who recently impeached him, and a day before the Senate will acquit him as his approval rating rises.

Mr. Trump touted his substantive policy achievements as he began to frame his case for re-election. They include tax reform and deregulation that gave the economic expansion a second life and has produced the tightest labor market since the 1960s. Wages are now rising for the least skilled and educated, a reversal of the Obama years when most gains went to those who held financial assets.

The President also celebrated his record number of first-term judicial nominees, who are remaking the judiciary as he promised in 2016. He talked about criminal-justice reform, which he pushed across the finish line in Congress despite doubts in his own party. And he talked at some useful length to make the case for education choice, especially for poor children denied it by teachers unions and a Democratic Party that increasingly opposes even charter schools. This will be a clear point of contrast in the election, and it’s a winning issue.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/rush/

“There is no one like him. Let’s keep him in our prayers.”   Amen! rsk

I haven’t felt much like working the last couple of days. Or like doing much else. See, Rush Limbaugh is a longtime friend of mine. Like all of Rush’s friends and tens of millions of other Americans, I’m reeling from the sudden diagnosis of advanced lung cancer.

Rush is an American original. It is said of some originals that, if you didn’t have them, you’d have to invent them. (Voltaire was talking about God when he said it; Don King, of course, about himself.) Yet no one could ever have invented Rush, because he was inconceivable.

When he burst upon the national scene over three decades ago, popular political media was the preserve of the political left. The thought of anyone, much less an unabashed conservative, carrying a three-hour daily broadcast through monologues teeming with conviction and good cheer — with the occasional phone call but virtually no guests — was not just unheard of. It was not in the realm of perceived possibility.

It took talent on loan from God, for sure. But it mainly took a guy with supreme belief in himself. Belief that was well-founded because it sprang from a unique combination of life-experience, of getting off the floor when life knocks you down, and of a sense of destiny about doing what you’re born to do. Add to that Rush’s abiding faith in the innate goodness of America — of her traditions, love of liberty, willingness to sacrifice, and grasp that human flourishing means learning from our mistakes.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68329-is-trumps-unorthodoxy-becoming-orthodox-2020-02-04

When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.

Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.

The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.

Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.

China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.

Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/03/joe-biden-ukraine-and-burismas-sugar-daddy/

No one has challenged the former vice president to account for the billions in U.S. tax dollars he pumped into Ukraine for his own personal and political gain. How did Biden’s involvement gild his largely disastrous foreign policy legacy before his latest run for president?

If Joe Biden fails to win the White House this year, perhaps he can run for president of Ukraine. After all, Ukrainians owe him—big time.

As the White House’s point man in Ukraine during Barack Obama’s second term, Biden acted more like he owned the place: threatening to withhold aid, forcing government officials to be fired, forming special agencies to portray himself as a fighter of international government corruption.

“No one in the U.S. government has wielded more influence over Ukraine than Vice President Joe Biden,” according to a profile on Biden in Foreign Policy magazine a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election. “Ukraine’s government has relied heavily on its direct channel to the U.S. vice president, and Biden’s departure will leave a gaping hole.”

For three years, capitalizing on the country’s political upheaval and armed with congressional authorization to lead yet another nation-building exercise, the vice president drove the gravy train between Washington and Kyiv. That train, laden with goodies courtesy of unsuspecting American taxpayers, got heavier as Obama’s presidency drew to a close. Ukrainian officials were so worried about losing Biden and gaining Donald Trump that they engaged in their own election chicanery in 2016.

While Biden’s son, Hunter, is the main target of the president’s defenders and some of the more fair-minded journalists, the senior Biden also deserves plenty of scrutiny for the billions in American tax dollars he doled out to a nation rife with corruption, political unrest, and no mechanism to account for how those funds would be spent. President Trump has been impeached for briefly delaying appropriated funds to Ukraine last year, yet Biden has faced no questions on the campaign trail about his key role in directing huge sums of U.S. aid to Ukraine when he was vice president.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-2-3-more-government-spending-does-not-buy-results-in-education-or-poverty-reduction

Here in New York, we love to feel good about ourselves for our compassion for the less well off. Yes, we pay higher taxes than they do in other places, but for that we get a much higher level of social services to lift up the poor and the downtrodden. Or at least, that’s the narrative.

I first covered this subject back in the very early days of this blog, on November 13, 2012, in a post titled “Why New York City Is A High Tax Jurisdiction.” That post pointed out that in fact the differential in public spending (and therefore taxes) between New York City and other jurisdictions could be found almost entirely in three things, none of which provided any measurable improvements in life quality to the poor and the downtrodden. The three areas were (1) overspending on public pensions, brought about by early retirement ages that enable New York City workers to have 25 to 40 years of post-retirement leisure at taxpayer expense, (2) overspending on K-12 education, brought about by paying about double the number of workers as other jurisdictions use to do the same work, and (3) overspending on Medicaid, brought about by adding every possible bell and whistle to the program without improving health outcomes in any measurable way.

For example, I had this to say about New York City spending on K-12 education:

According to census bureau figures cited here, New York City school spending was about $19,000 per student in 2009.  That’s about double the nationwide average of $10,615 per student cited here for 2010.  What do we get for double the cost per student?  Worse test scores than the national average. . . .   With over a million school children, the extra $8000 per student is an $8 billion budget item.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/02/04/democratic-caucus-results-delayed-by-mobile-app-issues/23918121/

Problems with a mobile app appeared to force a delay in reporting the results of the Iowa caucuses Monday, as the campaigns, voters and the media pressed party officials for an explanation and got few answers.

An Iowa Democratic Party official pointed to “quality control” as the source of the delays — but noted that about a quarter of the state’s nearly 1,700 precincts have reported their data already. The party also said the delay was not caused by a “hack or an intrusion.”

But other officials blamed technology. Des Moines County Democratic Chair Tom Courtney said he heard that in precincts across his county, including his own, a mobile app created for caucus organizers to report results to the party was “a mess.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-impeachment-adam-schiff-warns-of-acquittal-precedent-trump-could-offer-alaska-to-russians/

Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) said Monday that “a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in a president would now be beyond reach” if the Senate acquits President Trump in his impeachment trial.

Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, said during closing arguments in the trial that “Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election, or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision whether to go to war.”

Schiff also accused Trump’s legal team of employing the “dangerous” and “absurd” argument that a president cannot be impeached for anything other than a violation of federal criminal law.

According to Trump’s lawyers, “abuses of power that would help the president get reelected were permissible and therefore unimpeachable, and only those for pecuniary gain were beyond the pale,” Schiff argued. “Under this theory, as long as a president believed his reelection was in the public interest he could do anything and no quid pro quo was too corrupt, no damage to our national security too great.“