RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/return-of-the-nominations-blockade-11547079323

The U.S. Senate is back in session, and therefore so is the Democratic nominations blockade. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Wednesday that President Trump withdraw his nomination of Bill Barr as Attorney General, even though Mr. Barr served with distinction as President George H.W. Bush’s AG. The question is whether Senate Republicans are going to do anything more to overcome this deliberate political obstruction than they did in the last two years.

The Senate confirmed 77 stalled nominees—a collection of ambassadors, U.S. attorneys or other non-controversial picks—by voice vote on Jan. 2. But thanks mostly to Democratic objections, the upper chamber returned to the White House 384 nominees it failed to confirm in the 115th Congress. That includes some 70 judicial nominees.

The White House will now have to renominate these men and women, assuming they haven’t given up in frustration. Mark Greenblatt was nominated to be inspector general of the Ex-Im Bank in September 2017, 16 months ago. The Banking Committee approved him three months later; he’s still waiting for a floor vote. Burlington Stores exec Janet Dhillon, the nominee to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has been waiting 18 months.

The Partnership for Public Service reports that 543 of President Trump’s 934 nominations had been confirmed by Dec. 19, 2018. At the same point in Barack Obama’s presidency, 809 of his 1,003 picks had Senate approval.

The White House was rightly criticized for its slow start with executive-branch nominations, but the main problem long ago became the systematic Democratic effort to prevent President Trump from filling out the government. First, Democrats take as much time as possible tying up nominees in committee. Once even non-controversial nominees get to the floor, Democrats then object to a quick voice-vote confirmation and demand a cloture vote that requires 30 hours of floor debate.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272501/bad-news-biden-obama-says-country-needs-new-blood-daniel-greenfield

Joe Biden gets 90% of his cred from behind the white guy standing behind Obama in a bunch of photos. But Obama didn’t endorse him in 2016, instead he seems to have dissuaded him from running. Biden is hoping that 2020 will be his year, but I’ve questioned that.

Biden’s past hesitancy to run has little to do with supposed family grief, though he is cynically ready to run as a mourning father, rather than the unprincipled careerist and narcissistic hack that he actually is. His problems are legion and obvious. There’s no other race he would have a better and worse shot at. But his only asset is being Obama’s comic relief. And he won’t step forward until he’s locked down Obama’s support so that he can wear the ultimate icon of diversity as his political human shield.

Obama isn’t fond of the idea. That’s why he’s been willing to meet with anyone who isn’t Biden. The candidates Obama favors may be diverse, but more importantly young, Beto, Gillium and Deval Patrick. Obama could hardly be sending Biden a clearer message that he wants someone who is his opposite.

Meanwhile, like a deluded bride, Biden keeps waiting at the altar for Obama to come back to him. If Biden stays on top of the field, Obama may have no choice to back him, as he reluctantly backed Hillary. But Biden’s expectation that he can use Obama to stave off attacks in the primaries is misguided.

The message is becoming less subtle.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/08/kamala-harris-says-open-ocasio-cortezs-socialist-agenda/

Call it the Ocasio-Cortez Effect! Just two days after the freshman congresswoman announced on “60 Minutes” that Democrats should soak the rich with a 70 percent marginal tax rate, presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris said on “The View” that she is open to it. Drawing on her experience as a teacher, Harris commended Ocasio-Cortez for “challenging the status quo,” and promised to “explore new ideas.”

Among these new ideas, on which Meghan McCain questioned Harris, were more than just the confiscatory tax rates AOC put on the table. They included plans to end carbon emissions by 2030, including all cars. Yes, that’s right, Harris would not even say that ending private ownership of cars was off the table. Presumably, not having to shell out for car payments and gas will help Americans afford the new tax regime.

For weeks now, those on the left and some on the right have chided conservatives for being obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez. She’s just a freshman congresswoman, why are your knickers in a bunch? A manufactured story about conservative anger at her dancing in a video in college emerged this week. Surely conservatives are just put off by a powerful young woman of color.

Actually, what conservatives are put off by is socialism, which includes a life of 70 percent tax rates and being told they can’t own a car.

When one of the major contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, particularly one trying to represent the left wing, endorses this kind of thinking? It’s not just conservatives being shook by a radical young woman, it’s Democrats embracing her ideology in a significant way.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democratic-congresswoman-calls-out-fellow-democrats-for-religious-bigotry/

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, published an op-ed in The Hill yesterday, implicitly criticizing two of her fellow Democratic congresswomen for subjecting a judicial nominee to a religious test as a result of his Catholic faith and his long-time membership in the Knights of Columbus.

Though she doesn’t mention them by name, Gabbard was referring to Democratic senators Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), both of whom have targeted federal judicial nominee Brian Buescher for his Catholicism, and the latter of whom has demanded that he drop his membership in the Knights and recuse himself from any case on which the organization has taken a position.

Gabbard does explicitly cite the controversial comments of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who in the fall of 2017 questioned circuit-court nominee Amy Coney Barrett about her Catholic faith during her confirmation hearing, saying, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.” Feinstein’s remark received significant backlash from the right, and from Catholics in particular, who rightly noted the senator’s obvious implication that practicing Catholics are not suited to serve on U.S. courts as a result of their faith.

“While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus,” Gabbard went on. More from her op-ed:

The party that worked so hard to convince people that Catholics and Knights of Columbus like Al Smith and John F. Kennedy could be both good Catholics and good public servants shows an alarming disregard of its own history in making such attacks today. We must call this out for what it is – religious bigotry. . . . Elected leaders engaging in religion-baiting are playing with fire.

Predictably, the Democratic congresswoman has come under fire from at least one progressive commentator for making this argument:

Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel, for his part, attempted to explain the reaction to Gabbard’s op-ed, but did so fairly clumsily: “Gabbard began her political career as a social conservative, has made amends, but her reaction to conservative media coverage of ‘anti-Catholic’ Dems is leaving a mark. This *really* gets under Dems’ skin. Many are Catholic themselves and are accused of religious bigotry if they ask conservative Catholic nominees about their on-record ideology.”
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Meanwhile, the Post’s Jennifer Rubin, whose Twitter bio describes her as a “conservative blogger,” blithely dismissed Gabbard’s concerns about religious tests, tweeting, “I cannot imagine a stupider issue that impacts no one’s real life. anywhere. ever.” Perhaps Rubin is unaware of the fact that the Knights boast nearly 2 million members, most of whom are American, and one of whom is Gabbard’s own father, according to Hawaii News Now.

And Rubin, along with Gabbard’s other critics and much of the left, seems to care little for the reality that anyone who buys into rhetoric such as that of Feinstein and Harris and Hirono is telling American Catholics that their religious beliefs disqualify them from public service.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/religious-rights/424362-elected-leaders-who-weaponize-religion-are-playing-a

For too long in our country, politicians have weaponized religion for their own selfish gain, fomenting bigotry, fears and suspicions based on the faith, religion or spiritual practices of their political opponents.

Whether we think of ourselves as Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, agnostics, or anything else, it is imperative that we stand united in our commitment to protect religious freedom and the right to worship or not worship, safely and without the fear of retribution.

We must stand together, and with one voice condemn those who seek to incite bigotry based on religion. We cannot allow those who are anxious to exploit our differences to drive a wedge between us. We cannot and will not tolerate prejudicial treatment of those with whom we disagree, any more than we would tolerate such treatment of those with whom we agree.

Standing up for freedom of religion for all people is as critical now as it’s ever been–hatred and bigotry are casting a dark shadow over our political system and threatening the very fabric of our country. The heartbreaking atrocity in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were murdered while worshiping at their synagogue, is but the latest reminder of the horrible potential consequence of prejudice and bigotry. The shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., the shooting at the mosque in New York and too many others to list serve as devastating and atrocious reminders of what this kind of hatred and this kind of bigotry can lead to.

While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. If Buescher is “unqualified” because of his Catholicism and affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been “unqualified” for the same reasons.
Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that there “shall be no religious test” for any seeking to serve in public office.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/waiting_on_stage_left_again.html

While Warren, Harris, Booker, and Biden are bruited as potential Democratic candidates in 2020, there may be a surprise candidate being groomed right now. Barack Obama’s trajectory from the Illinois state Senate to the Oval Office in four years is instructive.

In March of 2000, Obama was a state senator in Illinois, a post he had since 1996 with virtually no political recognition. What he did have is a sterling résumé: an eight-year scholarship to Occidental College, a transfer into Columbia University, a post-college job as a “community organizer,” acceptance into Harvard Law School, and editorship of its law review. The actual academic records remain secret. There is no essay from college and no single article from the law review where he was editor.

In his first foray for national office, he attempted to unseat popular Illinois representative Bobby Rush (Illinois-District 2) in the 2000 Democratic primary. He lost. But he gained the interest of David Axelrod, a cunning political strategist.

In 2002, he tested the political waters with a carefully scripted speech opposing the Iraq war, calling it “a dumb war … a rash war … [a] cynical attempt to shove ideological agendas down our throats.”

He was careful to avoid the pratfalls of radical pacifism: “I don’t oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don’t oppose all wars.” He often revisited that speech in his campaigns. [Editor’s note: Obama repeatedly botched the location of the camp his grandfather – or was it a great uncle? – allegedly helped liberate. It was the Soviets who “first entered” Auschwitz.] CONTINUE AT SITE PLEASE

https://www.dailywire.com/news/41889/meltdown-ocasio-cortez-explodes-after-fact-check-ryan-saavedra

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) exploded on Monday after multiple left-wing publications fact-checked her and criticized her defense of the numerous falsehoods she has told.

The former bartender claimed on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday that people were too focused on being “factually” accurate, and not focused enough on being morally right, which drew widespread criticism.

That criticism carried over into news reports today from left-leaning publications, including The Washington Post and CNN, which published reports titled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s very bad defense of her falsehoods” and “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s very slippery slope on facts,” respectively.

Even leftist Whoopi Goldberg slammed Ocasio-Cortez, advising her to “sit still for a minute and learn the job .. .before you start pooping on people and what they’ve done, you got to do something … ”

Ocasio-Cortez then suggested that it was not fair that she was, in her own mind, being held to the same standards as President Donald Trump.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

✔ @AOCFacts are facts, America. We should care about getting things right. Yet standards of who gets fact-checked, how often + why are unclear.This is where false equivalency+bias creeps in, allowing climate deniers to be put on par w/scientists, for example.
Ocasio-Cortez then whined that she was getting fact-checked by one website the same amount of times as Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272471/rashidas-song-lloyd-billingsley

Rashida Tlaib is one of the first Muslim women in Congress but last week the Michigan Democrat revealed something else about herself. The first time Tlaib said “mother,” she had learned half a new word, the same one she showcased after being sworn in as a representative of the people.

“When your son looks at you and said ‘Mamma, look, you won — bullies don’t win.’ And I said, ‘Baby they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!’” The self-described Palestinian-American may be okay once she comes out of her shell, but Democrats had her back.

Rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been busy proposing tax hikes to 70 percent and abolishing energy from gas and oil. She took a break from building socialism to blast the “faux outrage” over Tlaib as “Republican hypocrisy at its finest,” citing Trump’s claim of “locker room talk” for his “sexual assault” of ladies.

“I probably have a generational reaction to it, but in any event I’m not in the censorship business,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “But I don’t think it’s any worse than what the president has said.” That is understandable from a woman whose favorite Stalinist was Soviet agent Harry Bridges, and who thinks walls are “immoral.” On the other hand, the parallel is not quite right.

Trump has said that we are going to “bomb the shit out of ISIS” and lamented “shithole countries.” During the primaries he mocked rivals but never said “I’m going to defeat the motherfuckers.” Trump once expressed a desire to put Hillary Clinton in jail but never called the Clintons “motherfuckers,” a term Bill and Hillary often used for each other, according to Christopher Andersen in American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ocasio-cortez-says-shes-more-like-a-british-socialist-wants-high-taxes-on-the-tippy-tops/

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told 60 Minutes in an interview aired Sunday that people should “call me a radical” as “it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country.”

“Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez is pushing for a Green New Deal that would ban use of fossil fuels in the country within 12 years. “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?” she said.

Explaining her plan to raise taxes to pay for such initiatives as the climate plan, Ocasio-Cortez told CBS, “You look at our tax rates back in the ’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000, may be 10 percent or 15 percent, etc. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn’t mean all 10 million dollars are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.”

The congresswoman was asked if she has “Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela” in mind when she espouses socialism.

“Of course not. What we have in mind — and what my policies most closely resemble — what we see in the UK, in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden,” Ocasio-Cortez replied.