RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iowa-caucus-democrats-disaster-trump-sanders-949655/amp/

EXCERPT

“What happened over the five days after the caucus was a mind-boggling display of fecklessness and ineptitude. Delay after inexplicable delay halted the process, to the point where it began to feel like the caucus had not really taken place. Results were released in chunks, turning what should have been a single news story into many, often with Buttigieg “in the lead.”

The delays and errors cut in many directions, not just against Sanders. Buttigieg, objectively, performed above poll expectations, and might have gotten more momentum even with a close, clear loss, but because of the fiasco he ended up hashtagged as #MayorCheat and lumped in headlines tied to what the Daily Beast called a “Clusterfuck.”

Though Sanders won the popular vote by a fair margin, both in terms of initial preference (6,000 votes) and final preference (2,000), Mayor Pete’s lead for most of the week with “state delegate equivalents” — the number used to calculate how many national delegates are sent to the Democratic convention — made him the technical winner in the eyes of most. By the end of the week, however, Sanders had regained so much ground, to within 1.5 state delegate equivalents, that news organizations like the AP were despairing at calling a winner. 

This wasn’t necessarily incorrect. The awarding of delegates in a state like Iowa is inherently somewhat random. If there’s a tie in votes in a district awarding five delegates, a preposterous system of coin flips is used to break the odd number. The geographical calculation for state delegate equivalents is also uneven, weighted toward the rural. A wide popular-vote winner can surely lose.

But the storylines of caucus week sure looked terrible for the people who ran the vote. The results released early favored Buttigieg, while Sanders-heavy districts came out later. There were massive, obvious errors. Over 2,000 votes that should have gone to Sanders and Warren went to Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer in one case the Iowa Democrats termed a “minor error.” In multiple other districts (Des Moines 14 for example), the “delegate equivalents” appeared to be calculated incorrectly, in ways that punished all the candidates, not just Sanders. By the end of the week, even the New York Times was saying the caucus was plagued with “inconsistencies and errors.”

Emily Connor, a Sanders precinct captain in Boone County, spent much of the week checking results, waiting for her Bernie-heavy district to be recorded. It took a while. By the end of the week, she was fatalistic.

“If you’re a millennial, you basically grew up in an era where popular votes are stolen,” she said. “The system is riddled with loopholes.”

Others felt the party was in denial about how bad the caucus night looked.

“They’re kind of brainwashed,” said Joe Grabinski, who caucused in West Des Moines. “They think they’re on the side of the right… they’ll do anything to save their careers.

An example of how screwed up the process was from the start involved a new twist on the process, the so-called “Presidential Preference Cards.”

In 2020, caucus-goers were handed index cards that seemed simple enough. On side one, marked with a big “1,” caucus-goers were asked to write in their initial preference. Side 2, with a “2,” was meant to be where you wrote in who you ended up supporting, if your first choice was not viable.

The “PPCs” were supposedly there to “ensure a recount is possible,” as the Polk County Democrats put it. But caucus-goers didn’t understand the cards.

Morgan Baethke, who volunteered at Indianola 4, watched as older caucus-goers struggled. Some began filling out both sides as soon as they were given them. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/impeachment-and-amnesia/

When it comes to executive excess, Trump lacks remorse and Democrats lack self-awareness.

‘If this had happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail by now.” So went President Trump’s morning-after remarks, following the GOP-controlled Senate’s acquittal vote, the denouement of the Democrat-controlled House’s approval of two thin-gruel articles of impeachment.

To say the president is defiant, that he is without remorse, understates the matter.

In a midweek speech explaining her not-guilty vote, Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) maintained that the president had “learned his lesson.” By week’s end, she sheepishly allowed that her assessment had been “aspirational” — Collins’ aspiration, that is, not Trump’s.

The president would not pretend to be either sorry or grateful for his reprieve. This is a big part of what ardent Trump supporters love about their man. Alas, it is just as big a part of why the president’s approval numbers languish in the 40s when they ought to be in the 60s, with a humming economy, record low unemployment, and the nation at relative peace.

President Clinton was not sorry either — not really. As shown by his occasional outbursts in recent years, he internalized the storyline that he was the victim, not the villain, of the Lewinsky scandal that led to his impeachment. But 21 years ago, his peerless political instincts told him, a just-acquitted sitting president, that it was important to feign contrition. He apologized to the American people, conceding that his misdeeds were shameful and had put the country and the Congress through a painful ordeal.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/08/bernie-owes-obama-big-time/

Those who are surprised by Bernie Sanders’ power in the Democrat primaries of 2016 and 2020 have not been paying attention. The self-styled “democratic socialist” from Vermont has inherited what President Obama sowed. Sanders is riding a wave of well-funded and highly trained young Marxists weaponized by President Obama. It is Obama’s hard work that allowed Bernie to jump from fringe character to viable presidential candidate.

These 21st-century progressives are not the loser SDS-types familiar to Baby Boomers. They know all about power. They are fundraising juggernauts on social media. Democratic candidates cater to them or drop out.

They foisted the “resistance” on traditional liberal Democrats. After Trump’s inauguration, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) were talking about working with the president. Hordes of activists descended on them, threatening their positions and threatening their homes.

The growing power of the hard Left within the Democratic Party’s ranks is not new. It is not the result of Trump derangement. It is the cause of Trump derangement.

Progressives punch way above their weight class, first writing the regulations as government bureaucrats and then using threats of lawsuits to control corporations and colleges. They write the federal and state regulations that require racial and gender quotas. They run the human resources departments to enforce compliance. Activists invade and intimidate boardrooms (one of the things Obama led and taught as a community organizer) insisting corporations adopt woke policies by accusing them of racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and threatening lawsuits.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/why-rush-limbaugh-matters/

Florida governor Ron DeSantis spoke to Rush Limbaugh last fall at a gala dinner for the National Review Institute. The radio host was there to receive the William F. Buckley Jr. award. “He actually gave me one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had,” Limbaugh told his audience the next day. “He listed five great conservatives and put me in the list.” DeSantis’s pantheon: William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Limbaugh.

Good list. No media figure since Buckley has had a more lasting influence on American conservatism than Limbaugh, whose cumulative weekly audience is more than 20 million people. Since national syndication in 1988, Limbaugh has been the voice of conservatism, his three-hour program blending news, politics, and entertainment in a powerful and polarizing cocktail. His shocking announcement this week that he has advanced lung cancer, and his appearance at the State of the Union, where President Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, are occasions to reflect on his impact.

It’s one thing to excel in your field. It’s another to create the field in which you excel. Conservative talk radio was local and niche before Limbaugh. He was the first to capitalize on regulatory and technological changes that allowed for national scale. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed affiliates to air controversial political opinions without inviting government scrutiny. As music programming migrated to the FM spectrum, AM bandwidth welcomed talk. Listener participation was also critical. “It was not until 1982,” writes Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right, “that AT&T introduced the modern direct-dial toll-free calling system that national call-in shows use.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/donald-trumps-huge-incredible-amazing-very-good-week/

Make no mistake about: President Trump has had a great week, and the Democrats had a lousy one. Not even the liberal media denies it. “Donald Trump is having a week that’s frustrating a lot of Democrats,” CNN’s Jake Tapper conceded as early as Tuesday. And he wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Democrats are reduced to hoping the president’s luck finally runs out,” wrote The Week’s Damon Linker. “It’s been a pretty good week for Donald Trump,” wrote David Graham of The Atlantic. “In fact, it’s hard to think of a better week in the Trump administration.”

“Republicans say Donald Trump had perhaps the best week of his presidency, nine months before the election. And even some Democrats privately agree with that assessment,” wrote Scott Wong of The Hill.

Should Trump be re-elected in November, it’s no stretch of the imagination to predict that many pundits will point this past week as the moment his re-election became inevitable.

Let’s review what happened this week, and why Team Trump should be celebrating.

Monday

Trump’s tremendous week was foreshadowed by the disaster that became of the Democratic Iowa caucuses. Bernie Sanders came in with momentum and all eyes were on the Hawkeye State to see who would actually emerge victorious, as the caucuses have typically predicted which candidate will ultimately win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

Instead, results were delayed… and delayed… and delayed some more. Something went wrong, horribly wrong, which was traced back to problems with an app that was developed specifically for the caucuses to report results, prompting accusations of shenanigans designed to hurt Bernie Sanders and prevent him from declaring victory Monday evening.

Results wouldn’t come in until later in the week, and reports of errors in the numbers only added fuel to the fire that the Democratic Party is run by corrupt and incompetent people.

Worse yet, turnout for the Democrat caucuses was lower than expected, matching 2016 levels, as opposed to 2008 levels. Meanwhile, Trump broke a record for the most votes for an incumbent president in the Iowa caucuses.

https://spectator.org/saving-private-ciaramella/

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
— Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier”

So it’s over. The impeachment of President Trump, the latest and by no means last installment in the Democrats’ deranged and all-consuming effort to disenfranchise the 63 million unenlightened, Untermenschen Americans who had the bad taste not to vote for Hillary Clinton, has come to its completely predictable end. The House managers figuratively had their heads caved in and teeth scattered like bloody chiclets on the floor of the Senate as the president’s lawyers effortlessly and humiliatingly pureed their flimsy case and fed it back to them like so much rancid pablum.

As the impeachment case was publicly exposed as a corrupt and baseless frame-up, Trump’s approval ratings and campaign fundraising reached new heights. Similarly, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump’s acquittal also enhanced the electoral prospects of Senate Republicans who face difficult races in November.

Moreover, to the undoubted surprise and consternation of the Democrat geniuses who ginned up Trump’s impeachment, his trial generated a bare minimum of public interest. Not only were there empty seats in the Senate gallery, but the trial also quickly turned into a television-ratings bust as well as a major irritant to potential voters who were deprived of their daily ration of soap operas and celebrity talk shows. As the impeachment farce played out, the vast majority of everyday Americans who have actual lives to lead ignored the Senate trial and attended to other, more important matters, such as rearranging their sock drawers and stenciling their driveways.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/02/06/trumps-new-war-on-wa

President Donald Trump is taking action to declare war on waste.

This week, we reviewed an advance copy of the President’s Budget FY2021 that will be submitted to Congress on Monday, February 10th. The president’s budget includes a bold and detailed chapter on curbing waste, fraud, corruption, and taxpayer abuse.

… [a] bloated Federal Government, with duplicative programs and wasteful spending, remains a critical threat to America’s future.

President’s Budget FY2021 | Chapter: Stopping Wasteful And Unnecessary Spending, page 13

Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com has advocated these goals from the pages of The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. With the national debt standing at $23.2 trillion and annual budget deficits of over $1 trillion, we applaud the president for starting a war on waste.

Here are just three of the non-partisan reforms the president will highlight in his FY2021 budget to Congress:

1. End Improper Year-End Waste. The federal government’s use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending spree has been going on for years. In our recent oversight report, we found $97 billion spent by 67 federal agencies during the final month of fiscal year 2018. In the last week of the fiscal year, $53 billion in contracts went out the door – that’s one in every ten dollars spent in the entire year.