RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/amy_klobuchar_shoots_herself_in_the_foot_with_comments_on_the_aurora_shooting.html

Only a week after launching her presidential campaign decrying global warming during a snowstorm in Minneapolis, the woman who wants to claim the mantle of a “moderate” Democrat has beclowned herself with a nonsensical statement. Even worse, as a veteran prosecutor — county attorney (D.A.) in the most populous county in Minnesota, responsible for all criminal prosecution — she missed a point squarely within her area of purported professional competence.

Screen grab from Twitter.

The Hill posted a video to Twitter of her campaigning in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (friendly territory not too far from the Minnesota border), claiming that the mass shooting in Aurora, Illinois shows that “It is time to put sensible gun control legislation in place.”

One problem: the shooter in Aurora was already prohibited by existing laws from having a firearm. The problem was that existing laws weren’t enforced. Via The Daily Wire:

During a Saturday press conference, Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said that the suspect had previously been arrested on six separate occasions by the Aurora Police Department, “including arrests for traffic and domestic battery-related issues.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/14/heres-system-it-sucks-meet-hill-staffers-ocasio-cortez-has-tapped-upend-washington/?utm_term=.cbc4f90621df

One is the daughter of an immigrant from Nigeria who wanted to understand the causes of her mom’s plight, starting a search that would lead her to Spelman, Oxford, Harvard, Georgetown, the State Department and, eventually, the halls of Congress.

The other was raised by a single mother in trailer parks and public housing in eastern Tennessee, becoming an avowed foe of the ultrawealthy whose Twitter handle reads: “Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure.”

The two have landed the two policy jobs with first-term Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who received about 5,500 job applications for her office — a record, according to experts.

Ariel Eckblad, 31, the congresswoman’s legislative director; and Dan Riffle, 37, a legislative assistant, will help steer Ocasio-Cortez as one of the most high-profile members of Congress.

They will help shape how Ocasio-Cortez works as an activist hoping to refashion the Democratic Party, while she also tries to serve as a more typical member building coalitions and moving legislation.

Ocasio-Cortez’s team made its first high-profile mistake late last week, as staffers accidentally released and then retracted a fact sheet about the Green New Deal that had won the support of most of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates and more than 60 House Democrats.

Many freshman lawmakers avoid the national spotlight, and it is very rare for their staffers to speak out. But just as Ocasio-Cortez is blasting away some of the conventions of politics, so is her team.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/democrats-went-crazy-in-three-months/

As centrists, they would clean up in 2020, but instead, it’s leftward ho!

The Democrats swept to power in Congress by campaigning in a way that has been successful for Democrats for generations. “Republicans will take away your health care,” they said, after having focus-grouped it. Now we are preparing for a 2020 campaign in which Donald Trump and Republicans can as easily advertise to the public: “Democrats will take away cows, and your car.” What happened to Democrats?

Back in November, it looked like Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House caucus had found the perfect plan for their party in the era of Trump: Avoid talking about impeachment and stick to simple bread-and-butter issues. Don’t tell swing voters that they are deplorable for having supported Donald Trump, instead, promise to protect the most popular features of Obamacare. Also, remind voters that Republicans cut taxes for the rich. Except for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ran in a deep-blue district, most of the boundary-pushing progressive candidates lost their elections. All signs pointed to the idea that Democrats just had to be the normal party, and the upper Midwest would snap back in 2020.

But progressives have decided to push the envelope anyway. Fearing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, blue states such as New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia set about passing expanded legal protections for various later-term abortions. This led to the governor of Virginia’s unforgettable discussion about providing “comfort” to a child born out of a botched abortion before “a decision” is made about whether that child should live or be made to die.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/former-governor-bill-weld-forming-an-exploratory-committee-to-challenge-trump/

Former Massachusetts Republican Governor and Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Bill Weld announced he is forming an exploratory committee with the intention of challenging the president of the United States in the GOP primaries.

Fox News reports that Weld made the announcement at “Politics and Eggs,” “a must stop in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire for any White House hopeful.”

“I am establishing an exploratory committee to pursue the possibility of my running for the presidency of the United States as a Republican in the 2020 election. I encourage those of you who are watching the current administration nervously but saying nothing to stand up and speak out,” Weld declared.

Weld is living a fantasy, as are most anti-Trump elements in the Republican Party who are looking for someone to save them from the president. They believe that there is a large number of Republican rank and file who have been intimidated into keeping their mouths shut about their opposition to Trump. This is silly. All signs point to Trump being embraced by almost the entire Republican Party. Any challenge to Trump makes Ahab’s hunt for the white whale look reasonable.

Weld warned in his speech that “our country is in grave peril and I cannot sit quietly on the sidelines anymore.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/some-really-stupid-people-our-catastrophically-clueless-congress/

Ever since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the scene I’ve fantasized about interviewing her. I wouldn’t ask her about her big socialist ideas or how she’d pay for them; as far as I’m concerned, it’s already been amply demonstrated that she knows nothing about economics or the history of socialism. Instead, I would ask her to find, say, Kazakhstan on a map. I would ask her to name five chemical elements, four Canadian provinces, and three Shakespeare plays. I would ask her which king signed Magna Carta. I would ask her to name one Russian novelist, one French newspaper, the fourth president of the United States, and the third book of the Bible.

And so on. Basic stuff. It shouldn’t be too much to expect a member of the U.S. Congress to be able to answer questions of this sort. Indeed, it shouldn’t be too much to expect a high-school graduate to be able to answer every one. But I suspect Ocasio-Cortez would be stumped by most if not all of them.

And would her fans care? Probably not.

She’s far from the only person on Capitol Hill who’s factually challenged to what I would consider a crippling degree. The other day Cory Booker told an interviewer “I do not speak Swiss.” It seems fair to conclude from this that he actually thinks there is a language called Swiss. In fact Switzerland has four official languages – French, German, Italian, and Romansch. I knew this as a kid. I assumed it was common knowledge. I realize otherwise now.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/joe-biden-not-sober-judicious-alternative-to-trump/

Biden is hardly the sober and judicious alternative to a supposedly reckless Donald Trump.

Some polls put 76-year-old Joe Biden as the Democratic front-runner for the 2020 presidential election. There is certainly some logic to that reckoning.

Biden has far more experience than any of his likely party rivals — 36 years in the Senate, eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, and two past presidential runs.

He may be the only Democratic candidate who could likely win back some of the “deplorables,” “irredeemables,” and “clingers” of the critical Midwestern swing states.

But all of that said, the folksy Biden is hardly the sober and judicious alternative to a supposedly reckless Donald Trump.

In many ways, Biden has been far wilder in his speech and decorum — despite nearly a half-century in politics.

Could a Biden campaign withstand #MeToo-era scrutiny? Biden was widely criticized for his handling of Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. In 2015, New York magazine ran a photo essay showing nine instances when Biden, in creepy fashion, leaned in closely and whispered in women’s ears, with several of those women appearing visibly uncomfortable with such interaction.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/13/amy-klobuchar-reportedly-threw-offices-supplies-at-employees-during-outbursts/

WASHINGTON – In the latest allegations of staff mistreatment against Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a new report says she tried to exact revenge on employees who sought new jobs by calling their bosses to have their offers rescinded.

Three former staffers and another source told Yahoo News about the alleged employment practice, which they saw as “vindictive, mystifying and counterproductive,” the site said, and an indication of how far she would go.

The new claim comes after other bad headlines for Klobuchar in the last week where former staffers reported hellish conditions working for the Minnesota senator who has portrayed herself as “Midwestern nice.”

“If you can’t treat the people closest to you with respect,” one former staffer told Yahoo News, “I don’t trust you to treat the American people with respect.”

Staffers said they were subject to outbursts over little matters and even office objects were thrown. Klobuchar would fixate on a minor mistake in an internal document, prompting late-night phone calls and all-caps emails. A seemingly inconsequential matter could turn into a cruel and humiliating “multi-day affair,” staffers said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-dems-are-hilariously-bad-presidential-candidates/

These past few weeks have been a tonic and a delight for any Republicans depressed by the midterms. So far the Democratic presidential slate is a clown car that has spat out a gaggle of mountebanks. The list includes a woman who previously and for many years claimed to be a “woman of color” but now has had to apologize after the world learned that “practically translucent” isn’t a color; T-Bone’s vegan buddy, who attacked meat eaters; a fake Latino who allowed himself to be trolled into going down to the border and railing against it; a “Senator Nice” who throws stuff at her terrorized staff and is rumored to make them shave her legs; and the She-Obama who just casually let slip that she wants to separate 150 million Americans from their private health insurance. Oh, and all of the above endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s crazypants Green New Deal, a wishlist so bonkers even Nancy Pelosi mocked it.

Hey, Dems, when a ranting 140-year-old socialist Larry David lookalike is the least nutty person around, you’ve got problems. Maybe Joe Biden will save you. Or maybe not. Says a report this week: “The Democratic political community is more broadly and deeply pessimistic about Biden’s potential candidacy than is commonly known,” and many strategists think “it’s a bad, bad idea.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/twenty-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-kirsten-gillibrand/

Defending Big Tobacco, keeping rifles under her bed, studying with Jeanine Pirro, and having Edie Falco play her grandmother.

1. Kirsten Gillibrand’s maternal grandmother was Polly Noonan, who became the longtime trusted aide of Erastus Corning II, Albany’s “mayor for life” from 1942 to 1983. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo once characterized their relationship this way: “Corning was the de facto leader. Polly was the leader.” Cuomo had Noonan organize events for his 1982 gubernatorial campaign and served as vice chairwoman of the Democratic State Committee during Cuomo’s three terms as governor. “Mayor Corning’s most influential confidante, Noonan handled patronage and political campaigns, handing out jobs that were the lifeblood of the old Democratic machine,” the Albany Times Union wrote in 2001. The Sopranos star Edie Falco played Noonan in last year’s off-Broadway play The True.

As Gillibrand put it in her 2014 autobiography, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World, “the mayor was simply part of our family.”