RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.rollcall.com/news/the-green-new-deal-you-cannot-be-serious

In the awkward aftermath of the Green New Deal’s rollout, perhaps the most appropriate question for its supporters, especially the Democratic presidential field, is one often posed by tennis bad boy John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!”

But, apparently, when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey introduced their proposal in February, they were deadly serious, and breathless progressives couldn’t wait to hop aboard the climate change express. First in line, the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate who were eager to offer up their enthusiastic support.

There was just one snag. The Green New Deal, in reality, wasn’t serious. These weren’t well-thought-out ideas or vetted policies. They were far left talking points that couldn’t possibly survive any real scrutiny. And they didn’t.

The blowback was epic. Critics pounced on the resolution’s absurd provisions. America would have to retool every structure in the country to maximize energy efficiency. No cars. No planes. Trains to everywhere. Well, except from L.A. to San Francisco, where fiscal reality has already ended that green dream.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273358/omar-felt-more-accepted-kenyan-refugee-camp-us-joseph-klein Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the controversial freshman member of the U.S. House of Representatives who has a habit of indulging in anti-Semitic stereotypes, complains about feeling marginalized in a land of white privilege. In an interview with Vogue Arabia, Rep. Omar, a refugee originally from Somalia who became a U.S. citizen nearly 20 years ago, waxed nostalgic about her days in a Kenyan refugee camp. She spent four years there as a child before resettling in the United States. At the refugee camp, Omar said, she could express her full identity. She felt free to be herself, living amongst like-minded people who looked and believed as she did. “When you’re a kid and you’re raised in an all-black, all- Muslim environment, nobody really talks to you about your identity,” Omar said. “You just are. There is freedom in knowing that you are accepted as your full self. So the notion that there is a conflict with your identity in society was hard at the age of 12.”

Omar is a perfect example of the entitled individual always willing to play the victim card. She and her family had been living in what one Somalian inhabitant of a refugee camp in Kenya called an “open prison.” It was too dangerous for Omar and her family to return to war-torn Somalia. At the same time, Kenya, Omar’s host country as a child, had no interest in integrating Somalian refugees like herself into Kenyan society. It was the United States that rescued Omar from the desperate conditions and hopelessness she was facing in her refugee camp. It was the United States that allowed her family to seek asylum to live in the United States. Her family eventually moved to Minneapolis and lived amongst a large Somali-American population.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/02/trump_and_conservatives_its_complicated_but_its_working_139929.html

Donald Trump is not a conventional conservative. Far from it. He’s a populist of the right. His strong appeal to conservatives lies in his nationalism, tax cuts, deregulation, and appointment of originalist judges.

Unlike Ronald Reagan, who had well-formed political ideas, Trump’s notions about public policy come from gut instincts, reinforced by cheering crowds. Their common thread is “Don’t tread on me.”

Trump’s disdain for tradition is the opposite of orthodox conservativism. It is most visible in the wrecking ball aimed at NATO and other allies. If you are rich enough and want our military protection, he says, then pay up or forget it. Prove you deserve our protection. Show us the money.

Trump’s threat to walk away is more credible than that of previous presidents because he is instinctively closer to Robert Taft’s isolationism than to Arthur Vandenberg’s internationalism. The Taft-Vandenberg debate in the late 1940s settled Republican foreign policy for the next 60 years. Vandenberg, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led bipartisan support for President Harry Truman’s policies, including the Marshall Plan and forming NATO. The party’s stance was sealed in 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Taft for the presidential nomination.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/02/sorry-palestine-does-not-exist/

In progressive America, an official elected in a predominantly Jewish district in the country’s largest city can be punished for asserting an indisputable historical fact if it happens to offend the sensibilities of hard-left activists. In this case, Kalman Yeger, a councilman from Brooklyn, in a back-and-forth about Rep. Ilhan Omar, tweeted that, “Palestine does not exist. There, I said it again. Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio quickly issued an ultimatum to Yeger demanding he apologize, or else. After refusing, NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson booted Yeger from—what I assume is a wholly useless—city immigration committee. “I found Council Member Yeger’s comments completely unacceptable…” Johnson explained. “They were dehumanizing to Palestinians and divisive, and have no place in New York City.”

Yeger’s statements might be debatable—perhaps some of you don’t find Omar’s numerous attacks on American Jews anti-Semitic—but the other contention is a historical and present-day reality. Despite this, nearly every media story covering the kerfuffle frames the councilman’s contention about the status of the West Bank and Gaza as some kind of appalling attack on decency. What other Howard Zinn-like historical fantasies must we adopt to participate in debate?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/02/hispanics_rally_to_trump_boosting_his_2020_chances_139933.html

Get ready for the anti-Trump “resistance” to go truly loco, because new polling data indicates Hispanic support for the president is swelling, a trend that could seal his 2020 re-election victory.

When I helped lead the Trump Hispanic Advisory Council in 2016, our effort was widely derided by skeptics certain that the narrative of Trump as anti-Latino would doom his candidacy, particularly in heavily Hispanic states like Florida. But that November, Hispanics saw through the media smears and Trump massively outperformed dour expectations, actually surpassing Mitt Romney’s 2012 percentage among Latino voters.

Since then, prospects have only improved – most importantly for the overall well-being of America’s Hispanic citizens, but also for the political prognosis of President Trump. So much good news erupted last week for the president with the conclusion of the Mueller inquiry that stunning new polling data was largely glossed over. McLaughlin & Associates revealed that Hispanic approval for Trump in March jumped to 50%. This number matched the January Marist/NPR/PBS survey that shocked cynics with its own 50% approval finding. Even if those polls are too aggressive, February’s Morning Consult/Politico poll showed Trump’s Hispanic approval vaulting to a still-impressive 45%.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273355/rep-omar-investigation-over-paying-divorce-lawyer-daniel-greenfield

“Last year, Alpha News investigated the interesting background of Omar after Powerline Blog writer Scott Johnson indicated Omar may have engaged in marriage fraud. Omar, who publicly identified Ahmed Hirsi to be her husband, is currently married to Elmi – who through extensive investigation appears to be Omar’s brother.”

Clearly the fault of the Jews.

WASHINGTON (SBG) – Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the controversial freshman House Democrat, is soon to learn the results of a probe into her campaign spending as a state lawmaker in Minnesota, Sinclair has learned, with authorities there having recently completed their investigation and preparing to issue rulings in a pair of complaints Omar faces.

The complaints were filed last year, while Omar cruised to election to the House of Representatives, by a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Steve Drazkowski. In referring Omar to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, Drazkowski alleged that Omar improperly spent close to $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use, including payments to her divorce attorney and for travel to Boston and Estonia. Drazkowski’s filing of the two complaints followed an earlier episode in which Omar repaid $2,500 for honoraria she received for speeches at colleges that receive state funding, a violation of ethics rules for Minnesota lawmakers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-betomania-sweep-america-11554160473

A $6 million day of fundraising elevated former Rep. Beto O’Rourke from the fringes of speculative Democratic presidential politics to can’t-be-ignored viability. Edging out Sen. Bernie Sanders’s record chummed a media feeding frenzy.

Mr. O’Rourke officially kicked off his campaign in El Paso, Texas, his hometown, Saturday. “This is a campaign for America, for everyone in America,” he said, sounding either breathtakingly aspirational or hopelessly naive.

Mr. O’Rourke is taking fire from people on the left, like me, who see him as all hat, no cattle. But he keeps rising in the polls. It is entirely possible to imagine him winning. And that’s thanks to the eternal appeal of a pretty face. He’s a rising star in today’s Democratic Party despite losing a Senate race, merely because he managed to keep it close. Where I come from, one who loses is a loser. And the loss was to Ted Cruz, who is highly intelligent but gleefully smug and was tarnished by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Beto is young, has hardly any national political experience (six years each on the El Paso City Council and in Congress), and is an ideological cipher who evidently doesn’t know what he believes. Evoking Hillary Clinton’s “listening tour” of 2000, he plans to travel around to “listen to those who I seek to serve, to understand from your perspective how we can best meet these challenges.”

Mr. O’Rourke probably won’t be the nominee. There’s lots of competition to be the Democratic “fresh face,” including candidates such as Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who can credibly claim to have accomplished something. But Betomania is real and weird. Cory Booker didn’t get this much media love when he rescued a neighbor in Newark, N.J., from a burning building. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273338/what-if-you-launch-presidential-campaign-and-no-daniel-greenfield

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was going to launch her kickoff rally right in front of President Trump’s front door. “No other candidate has done something like this,” she bragged. “We’re rallying at Trump’s doorstep to send a message loud and clear: We’re together, we’re brave.”

By the time she showed up in front of “Trump’s doorstep” at the Trump International Hotel off Manhattan’s Central Park, the President of the United States was traveling back from Florida to Washington D.C. He was nowhere near the hotel where Gillibrand had decided to “confront” him.

There was nothing “brave” about venturing into the Upper West Side, where the locals would rather commit ritual suicide with a spork or shop at Walmart, before voting for Trump. Starting your rally in a place where Hillary Clinton won 80% of the vote isn’t brave. It’s cowardly. Gillibrand would have shown more courage by going back to her old district where Hillary only won 54% of the vote.

But instead her campaign threw up a giant American flag and then brought out two illegal aliens.

“Our next president will lead with bravery. Our next president with be Kirsten Gillibrand,” declared Monica Sibri, an illegal alien who won’t be able to vote for Gillibrand.

It was a balmy spring day in the Big Apple with sunshine and a high of 60. The NYPD, out in force, had roped off blocks to accommodate the crowds of the brave expected to turn out on Trump’s doorstep.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chairman-jerrold-nadlers-cynical-argument/

Today in the New York Times, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler writes an op-ed demanding the full release of the entire Mueller report by tomorrow. He never quite gets around to mentioning what’s holding up the release of the Mueller report, which is the need to remove information related to grand jury deliberations or other ongoing investigations that have been referred to other offices.

As noted in one of last week’s Morning Jolts, there are good reasons why prosecutors generally don’t release grand jury information. In his letter to Congress, Attorney General William Barr specifically cited Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), which provides that government attorneys and the jurors themselves, among others, “must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury.” Barr didn’t make this rule up, it’s not obscure or optional, and Nadler knows darn well about its importance. Barr stated in a letter to Nadler and the judiciary committee that the special counsel’s office is assisting in identifying portions that are grand-jury testimony or relate to ongoing investigations or prosecutions.

But because the Democrats prefer a narrative of a sinister cover-up, Nadler just averts his eyes and pretends the rules on grand jury testimony don’t exist.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/too-many-are-ignoring-the-rise-of-anti-semitism-on-the-left/

During the last two years, the media have been reporting about a rise in anti-Semitism. When the media write and speak about it, their focus is almost exclusively on “right-wing” anti-Semitism. Most of the establishment Jewish organizations, well known for their political liberalism and identification with the Democrat Party, similarly focus on anti-Semitism from the right and give only rare lip service when anti-Semitic writings and attacks come from the political left. (The Ilhan Omar case is a mild exception, though not generating anywhere near the determination and demonization if she had been from the political right). As each day goes by, guided by their own left-wing outlook as well as the hit-lists coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the category “right-wing” has expanded to include almost anything conservative or nationalistic, so that even expressed love of many aspects of America’s historic culture can confer on one the status of “white supremacist,” i.e., anti-Semite.

Indeed, I and many of my associates were appalled and worried by the silence of the media and major liberal Jewish organizations in the face of vicious attacks and rhetoric against Jews and Israel which transpired ever so frequently during the Obama years. There was silence because the attacks against Jews were coming from groups or members of groups that embody the left/liberal coalition.