RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-government-cannot-go-too-far-in-addressing-climate-change/

Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) dismissed Friday the notion that the recently introduced Green New Deal plan is extreme and unrealistic, arguing instead that there is no action too drastic for the government to take to address climate change.

“Does the Green New Deal go too far?” Sunny Hostin asked Sanders Friday on ABC’s The View.

“No. You cannot go too far on the issue of climate change. The future of the planet is at stake, ok? . . . According to the best scientists in the world, we have twelve years to begin substantially cutting carbon emissions,” Sanders responded.

Hostin also pressed Sanders on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent suggestion that couples are rightfully hesitant to have children because of the threat of climate change.

“[Ocasio-Cortez] claimed that the looming threat of climate change that continues to exacerbate global conflicts has gotten so dire that it is a legitimate question to ask whether it is moral for people to have children now. Does she have a point there or is that too radical?” Hostin asked.

“Obviously that’s an enormously personal choice that every couple is going to have to make,” Sanders said before redirecting the conversation to President Trump’s past skepticism of the threat posed by climate change.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-governor-announces-pre

Washington governor Jay Inslee announced Friday that he will enter the already crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, citing the “existential threat” of climate change as the primary motivation for his run.

Inslee, who represented Washington in Congress for 20 years before becoming governor in 2012, sought to differentiate himself from the eleven other Democrats in the field by emphasizing his commitment to addressing climate change.

“I’m Jay Inslee and I’m running for president because I’m the only candidate that will make defeating climate change our number one priority,” Inslee said in his announcement video released Friday

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-primary-challenge-2020-trouble-republican-party/

Does anyone really believe that Weld, Hogan, or Kasich is going to define the future of the post-Trump Republican party?

The race for 2020 is taking shape, although there are still significant unknowns, including whether Donald Trump will get a serious primary challenge.

His fiercest Republican critics say, “Yes — please, please, yes.”

They are probably wrong, and it’s certainly nothing to root for.

Trump’s dominance of the party begins with his lockdown support of the right, forcing any primary challenger to the left. This isn’t fertile territory. Self-identified moderates and liberals are only a fraction of the party, and it is grass-roots conservative activists who have fueled the most potent Republican primary challenges (Ronald Reagan in 1976, Pat Buchanan in 1992).

Because a primary challenge would naturally come from the left and is unlikely to succeed, it will tend to attract people who don’t have a future in GOP national politics and lack conservative bona fides — the wayward former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld; the centrist governor of Maryland Larry Hogan; the former Ohio governor John Kasich, who convincingly demonstrated his lack of national electoral appeal in 2016.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-socialism-is-a-rising-danger-in-democratic-party

The Democratic Party is reaching a dangerous tipping point over socialism and what it really stands for as the American economy grows nearly 3 per cent, poverty is down and the number of people employed is at a record high.

Yet among young people and a large part of Congress now, socialist sentiment is rising sharply and could be the defining issue of the next elections.

In the February Harvard-Harris Poll, 64 per cent of registered voters said that the Democratic Party is supporting socialism. This is a major shift in the image and perception of the Democratic Party and it could have enormous consequences.Only about 27 per cent of people classify themselves as liberals, so liberalism and socialism are now about the same in terms of electoral strength.

In the same poll, 65 per cent of Americans said they personally favor mostly a capitalist system for America, indicating a huge and growing disconnect between the Democrats and the rest of the country. Capitalism was particularly strong with voters over age 65 as nearly 80 per cent of them are capitalist.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272969/virginia-democrats-elect-their-first-islamist-anti-daniel-greenfield

While Virginia Democrats were debating whether to oust Governor Northam for wearing blackface, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax over alleged rape and Attorney General Mark Herring for also wearing blackface, a much more blatant example of contemporary bigotry by a Virginia Democrat had come to light.

It received virtually no coverage by the media.

Ibraheem Samirah, running in a special election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, had his social media history exposed. Aside from the usual rants about Israel, Samirah had posted that the Jews had stolen his grandfather’s land and “washed off as the Promised Land for Jews only (using the Torah and Zionist ideology, a 3000 yo religious book and a 100 yo Jew-only philosophy.)”

Samirah’s hatred for Israel wasn’t news. The Jordanian Muslim BDS activist had co-founded a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (a misnamed pro-terrorist hate group that is neither peaceful nor Jewish), had served as a spokesman for Students for Justice in Palestine, a hate group whose chapters had been involved in numerous anti-Semitic incidents ranging from hate speech to acts of violence, and had spoken at an American Muslims for Palestine conference: an organization accused of supporting Hamas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/the_democrats_embrace_not_making_sense.html

“Stop Making Sense” is a classic 1984 concert film featuring the alt-rock group Talking Heads. The title has a certain punkish frisson, but is also a joke. Not so the modern Democratic party which might as well adopt “Stop Making Sense” as its platform.

Nothing about the competing positions of Democratic candidates makes much sense, and that’s not just from a Republican or conservative perspective. That’s from a position of logic, consistency, and anything resembling sound judgment.

Internally, the positions being advocated by the leading Democratic candidates and the party activists that support them are an incoherent contradictory mishmash of ideas that might sound like the stuff you’d hear at a college campus pot party, with a lot of pot.

It appears the Democrats do not care whether the emerging positions of its candidates and activists make are incoherent, contradictory, thoroughly impractical, and/or unconstitutional as a matter of law.

Three contradictory and irreconcilable planks dominate Democrat politics today and nobody is trying to rationalize them — socialism, identity politics, and

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ilhan-omar-fears-her-jewish-colleagues-are-using-anti-semitism-charge-to-shutdown-debate/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) pushed back Wednesday against the rash of anti-Semitism accusations that have been leveled against her since she was elected, suggesting her “Jewish colleagues” and others may use accusations of bigotry to chill debate over U.S. policy toward Israel.

“What I’m fearful of — because Rashida and I are Muslim — that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim,” said Omar, who was joined at the “Progressive Townhall” event in Washington, D.C. by fellow freshman representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).

“To me, it’s something that becomes designed to end the debate because you get in this space of – yes, I know what intolerance looks like and I’m sensitive when someone says, ‘The words you used Ilhan are resemblance of intolerance,’” [sic] Omar continued. “And I am cautious of that and I feel pained by that. But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something regardless of what it is we say . . . we get to be labeled something. And that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.”

https://spectator.us/quick-dirty-chicago-mayoral/

On Tuesday, Chicago voters head to the polls to vote for Rahm Emanuel’s successor as Da Mayor. ‘Why vote in late February?’ you might ask. ‘Didn’t Chicago just vote in November for House members and Governor?’Oh, you naive soul. For decades, Chicago has held its elections in February precisely because it is cold, often snowy, and hard to get to the polls. When you suppress ordinary voters, who is left? For many years, it was reliable voters for the old Chicago Democratic Machine. Some of them drove city busses or garbage trucks; others shuffled papers in city offices. Some filled potholes. Many more watched their co-workers fill potholes while they grabbed a cigarette. What better way to ensure that insiders get reelected?This system is on life-support, mortally wounded by the Federal Courts, which made two crucial rulings in the 1970s and 1980s. Known as the Shakman Decrees, the first said the city could not hire workers based on their politics. The second said it could not fire workers for the same reasons. The courts knew the city would not comply readily, so they appointed monitors, who stayed for decades.

Those decrees drove a stake through the heart of the old system, where alderman and ward committeemen gave out good-paying jobs to city workers who got out the vote. It was a well-organized system. The city employees had to visit homes in their neighborhood, listen to what residents wanted (such as a stop sign or better garbage pickup), and then share that information with their boss, known in Chicago as ‘their Clout.’ The visit concluded by reminding voters who they should vote for. Often the advice was simply ‘vote straight Democratic.’ These political workers were expected to make campaign donations and were held responsible for how many of their voters came to the polls. Fail in these critical tasks and find yourself a new job.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-domestic-enemies-geopolitical-stage/

In the 1980s Bernie Sanders cozied up to dictators from around the world.

In his decades-long career in politics, Bernie Sanders was never more active as a foreign-policy figure than when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vt. He owned it. “Burlington had a foreign policy,” he wrote in his 1997 book, Outsider in the White House. From his mayoral perch he fired off missives to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, demanding better treatment of IRA prisoners held in Northern Ireland. He tried to establish direct relations with the incoming Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, hoping to establish a radio channel that would broadcast the revolution to Vermont. The mayor met with Daniel Ortega to convey that many Americans rejected the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. Ortega, in the many years since, has looted his country, installed hideous light fixtures along the major roads to please his wife, suborned much of the Catholic Church to his rule, and blown past his own constitution’s term limits. The country is sliding into unrest, as the aid that used to come in from the Netherlands and Luxembourg has dried up.

As mayor, Sanders cemented a sister-city relationship between Burlington and the Russian city of Yaroslavl (he and his wife spent their honeymoon in the Soviet Union). Sanders was diplomatic during his trip. After a presentation on central planning, Sanders told his Soviet peers that health care and housing were better in the United States, though they cost much more back in America. When he came home, Sanders praised Soviet train stations and “palaces of culture.” His wife was even more effusive, almost describing the theory of New Soviet Man, when she described a cultural life that wasn’t cleaved off from work, as a mere hobby, but fully integrated into an ideal of community service. Burlington’s foreign policy, as it was then, was driven by idealism (some of it misguided), lots of easy talk about imperialism, and dislike of “Ronald Ray-gun.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272992/proud-queen-identity-politics-john-perazzo

During the MSNBC program AM Joy this past Sunday, host Joy Reid asked Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris if, during her campaign, it would “be difficult … to advocate race-based policy” without becoming vulnerable to the charge that she was engaging in identity politics. In her response, Harris said:

“I want to talk about the issue of identity politics, Joy. This term identity politics, people will use that term — it’s like people used to talk about the race card. They bring this term up when you talk about issues that are about race, about sexual orientation, about religion. They’ll bring it up when we are talking about civil rights issues as a way to marginalize the issue, as a way to frankly try to silence you or shut you up. We need to call it what it is, which is to try and divert away from a conversation that needs to happen in America. Why? One, because we must speak truth. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism are all real in this country, so we need to have that conversation and address it. Two, and this is equally important, how America deals with the issues and the disparities, and also the hate that can be — that causes these issues to become lethal in proportion — how America deals with these issues is a matter of American identity. This is not about identity politics, and if it is, it’s about the identity of the United States of America. How we handle the issues will be about our collective identity.”

If we distill Harris’s meandering reply down to its essence, she is saying that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with identity politics, because identity politics is ultimately a vehicle for helping more Americans understand that the very “identity of the United States of America” has always been — and continues to be — thoroughly infested with the ineradicable sins of “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, [and] anti-Semitism.”