RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/03/a-republic-not-a-

How dumb is the 2020 presidential election campaign going to be? Unfathomably dumb. Breathtakingly dumb. Seriously; pretty dumb.

And that’s just among the mainstream candidates. Just wait and see what happens if an independent billionaire jumps in the race.

Exhibit A this week: Howard Schultz, the former chief executive officer of Starbucks, is reportedly mulling a third-party or independent run for president. Schultz, a longtime Democrat, says both parties are hopelessly dysfunctional. (Which is undeniably true.) Neither political party, for example, is lifting a finger to address the $21.9 trillion national debt.

Exhibit A-1: Schultz appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Wednesday, where he was interrogated about, wait for it, the price of a box of Cheerios.

Schultz was shocked to learn that Cheerios cost around four bucks — or less than a triple grande mocha. (But not nearly as delicious.) It also has nothing to do with the national debt, or immigration, or foreign policy, or anything else worth discussing.

Does it matter that a billionaire ex-CEO doesn’t know how much a box of cereal costs? Only if you’re in the business of asking stupid gotcha questions on television. I don’t know how much Cheerios cost, either. I don’t even eat cereal. Do you?

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/03/the

This column makes excellent points but I am opposed to Nazi metaphors….The Nazis exterminated millions including one of every three Jews in the world….It is wrong when the Democrats do it and equally wrong when conservatives do it….rsk

In America’s current political climate, Democrats are making frequent use of terms they understand poorly at best. To silence debate and criticism, Democrats routinely employ labels such as “Fascist,” “Nazi,” or “racist” to shut down and intimidate their political targets. Ironically, however, as Democrats engage this way they are quickly adopting the very characteristics of those groups they supposedly despise.

Most notably, the Democrats increasingly display anti-Semitism along with their hostility to Christianity, traditional American values, and individual liberty. The recent revelation that Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted in 2012 that Israel had “hypnotized the world” is a clear indication of where the Democratic Party is headed—and why Americans should worry.

Beginning with Omar’s tweet about Israel “hypnotizing” the world, the congresswoman’s sentiment is a common theme in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the 1925 screed that became the centerpiece of Nazi thought, Hitler routinely accuses Jews of undertaking a “campaign of lies” while lamenting the supposed “ignorance of the broad masses” and “narrow-mindedness of the upper classes” about Jews . While Democrats and the Left routinely attempt to distance their hatred of Israel from anti-Semitism, their opprobrium of the Jewish state similarly parallels that of the late Nazi führer. In Mein Kampf, Hitler accuses Zionists of wanting a Jewish state in order to have a “central organization for their international world swindle.” Omar sounds exactly like a real Nazi.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/3/a-growing-record-of-insanity/

To say the left in America has gone off the rails is like saying the Super Bowl is a fairly popular football game.

It’s hard to keep up with the tsunami of cultural and economic insanity thundering through a thousand outlets every day, but here’s a try. You thought Vermont’s Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was radical? Current Democratic leaders start with his views and go further left.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mocks the idea of securing America’s southern border as something only a bigot like President Trump would want. Hence, she and her party oppose even a dime for any more physical barriers that would help the border patrol stem the ongoing invasion of illegal immigrants. Three more caravans on the way? Ho hum.

Openly socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, wants not only open borders but to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is charged with keeping us safe from drug dealers and violent criminals. She also backs a confiscatory tax scheme with rates as high as 70 percent, free college tuition and a “Green New Deal” mandate that would strangle industry, cause energy costs to skyrocket and make blackouts common. She’s a huge hit wherever she speaks.

New York State’s Democrats last week legalized late-term abortion right up to a baby’s due date. Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam endorsed what amounts to infanticide after birth while defending a proposed law that would allow abortion of a baby even during a woman’s labor. Commentator Larry O’Connor has dubbed Dr. Northam, who is a pediatric neurologist, “Governor Gosnell,” after the infamous Philadelphia baby butcher recently depicted in the Dean Cain film “Gosnell.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, California Democrat, wants to end all private

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

The incendiary yearbook photo of Ralph Northam in (pick one) blackface or KKK robes should have come out during his campaign for Governor of Virginia, but didn’t. Unless the campaign manager Chris Leavitt was actively sabotaging the campaign (which I doubt), we can assume that the photo didn’t come from it.

So, why did the photo appear now and who released it to Big League Politics, a right-leaning website?

The first step is to ask the famous Latin question, “Cui bono?” “Who benefits?”

It is pretty clear to me that the abortion industry and its political handmaidens were desperate to change the subject from a physician advocating terminating a life after birth as part of the push by states to legalize just about anything that kills a baby anytime before it is sent home from the hospital. This is because there is genuine fear that the new majority on the Supreme Court will modify or eliminate Roe v. Wade’s blanket federal approval, and send the issue to the states.

https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-democrats-lose-their-minds/

I’m not a Democrat—in case you haven’t noticed—but Howard Schultz is. And Schultz isn’t one of those Blue Dog, Southern or Midwestern, conservative Democrats either. He’s from Seattle, holds liberal positions on, as far as I can tell, every issue, and has donated gobs of money to the Democratic Party and to the last two Democratic presidents. But Schultz is also a democratic capitalist who attributes his phenomenal success—his fortune from Starbucks is around $3 billion—at least in part to America’s culture of entrepreneurial risk-taking, minimal government interference in commerce, individual responsibility, and rule of law. He worries that the Democratic Party, radicalized by the presidency of Donald Trump, is in the process of abandoning support for the very aspects of American life that made his life possible. “Both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics,” Schultz told 60 Minutes last Sunday. The Democrats then began proving his point for him.

On Monday, in a townhall organized by CNN, Kamala Harris endorsed a Medicare-for-All plan that would “eliminate”—her word—private insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, employer-provided health insurance covers “approximately 152 million nonelderly people in total.” A poll last year by America’s Health Insurance Plan (AHIP) found that 71 percent of Americans were satisfied with their employer’s plan. Most Americans have health insurance, and most Americans are pretty happy with their insurance. Too bad: Kamala Harris says it’s time to “move on.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rep-ilhan-omar-likens-israel-to-jim-crow-south/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continued her public campaign against Israel on Twitter Thursday night, comparing the state and its policies to the Jim Crow South of mid 20th century America.

In citing the “millions of people under Israeli control,” liberal activist Max Berger, whom Omar was responding to, was likely referring to the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who are governed by the Palestinian Authority, and, as such, cannot vote in Israeli elections.

Since being elected in November to represent Minnesotans in the House of Representatives, Omar has prioritized the promotion of Palestinian rights in numerous media appearances and public statements. Earlier this week, she told Yahoo News that she “almost chuckles” when she hears Israel referred to as a “democracy” and compared the country to Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

“I mean just our relationship with the Israeli government and the Israeli state. And so when I see Israel institute laws that recognize it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold [Israel] as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if we see that [in] any other society we would criticize it, call it out,” Omar said. “We do that to Iran, we do that to any other place that sort of upholds its religion. And I see that now happening with Saudi Arabia and so I am aggravated, truly, in those contradictions.”

Omar was also forced to apologize earlier this month after initially defending a years-old tweet in which she accused Israel of “hypnotizing the world.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/democrats-will-do-everything-to-stop-donald-trump-except-compromise/

If their headlong lurch to the left costs them their one shot at beating Trump next year, they’ll only have themselves to blame.

Perhaps the most common left-wing critique of Donald Trump is that he represents an extraordinary threat to American democracy. He’s not a normal Republican, or even a normal Republican with a bad Twitter habit; he’s something else entirely. He’s a threat to American norms and values, a mendacious wannabe authoritarian who’s unlocking the darkest forms of white-identity politics and straining the unity of an already polarized nation. He’s the man who could destroy the post-war international order and ultimately bring ruin to the network of alliances and trading relationships that has kept the United States safe and prosperous for generations.

These are desperate times for the nation, Democrats say. This is a moment when patriotic Americans should put aside their differences, rally behind a message of national unity, and defeat Trump to — at the very least — restore basic respect for the rule of law and the American constitutional order. The 40 percent have chosen their man. Now liberals must extend their arms to the 60 percent and sweep Trumpism from the land.

Or not. Judging from the last month, now is the time for Democrats to sprint to the left, countering Trump’s base politics with base politics of their own. In just the last few days we’ve seen Kamala Harris propose the abolition of private health insurance, Elizabeth Warren propose a plainly unconstitutional wealth tax, and Democratic bills in New York, Virginia, and Vermont seeking to expand access to third-trimester abortions — procedures that even a majority of Democrats dislike. At the same time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a 70 percent tax rate on top earners, and Nancy Pelosi has called a border wall an “immorality” — even as Democrats in the past have voted for and funded hundreds of miles of border barriers.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/01/new_jersey_democratic_sen_cory_booker_launches_2020_bid_139348.html

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Friday declared his bid for the presidency in 2020 with a sweeping call to unite a deeply polarized nation around a “common purpose.”

The New Jersey Democrat, who is the second black candidate in a primary field that’s already historically diverse, delivered his message of unity amid an era marked by bitter political division. He announced his run on the first day of Black History Month, underscoring his consequential status as America’s potential second black president after Barack Obama.

“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good-paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame,” Booker said in a video message to supporters, subtly jabbing at President Donald Trump.

“It is not a matter of can we, it’s a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will?” he added. “I believe we do.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/donald-trump-and-the-latino-vote/

Trump would not have to change his policies to capture 40 to 50 percent of the Latino vote (which is quite different from “Latino” spokespeople on television and the Jorge Ramos crowd), as opposed to simply articulating them:

1) The “new” Democratic party not only show signs of a new more insidious anti-Semitism — as we’ve seen from comments by Senator Feinstein, Harris, and Hirono, and the surreal and barbarous statements coming out of Virginia and New York on third-trimester abortion (and near infanticide). But it is now becoming anti-Catholic to a degree not seen in decades in America. Why would a devout Catholic wish to side with such bigotry? Trump is on the right side of the abortion and the religious-discrimination issues.

2) Hispanic unemployment is at record low levels in a growing economy. One can see the realities by simply driving around small towns in Central California where the flurry of activity and demand for labor are unprecedented, and workers have a range of options and leverage not seen in the 21st century. Even slight decreases in border crossings are force multipliers in the empowerment of Mexican-American and other Hispanic citizens in efforts to boost wages and gain options in employment. Trump’s policies did much of that, visible even in highly regulated and less dynamic California. Few middle-class commuters wish to endorse the New Green Deal that would mandate soon ending chain saws, leaf blowers and the workers’ daily commute.