RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/what_a_mess_the_us_congress_is.html

The U.S. Congress is a disgrace.  Democrats play dirty, and Republicans are neutered and perhaps in covert cahoots. 

The Democrat-run states and cities have shut down businesses and demanded citizens limit their movement.  Without compensation.  This is what in legal terms regarding government-asset grab is termed an “illegal taking.”  Typically, an illegal taking is a term used when government grabs private land.  But it applies to any government taking,  and current onerous government COVID restrictions have resulted in the demise of countless businesses and a plethora of bankruptcy filings.  Thus, we are witnessing  illegal COVID governmental takings on a colossal  scale.  There has been no compensation. 

After months of inactivity, Congress has come up with a big fat multi-trillion-dollar COVID stimulus dud.  Legislators have endorsed Dostoyevsky-sized legislation for soaring handouts  for foreign  gender education enhancements and millions for border walls in  foreign  lands, while our border wall is sneered at.  In fact, putative president-elect Biden has talked of tearing down the southern border wall. 

Struggling  Americans, whose businesses have been decreed nonessential and arbitrarily shut down, are being belatedly doled out a measly $600.00 per person.  What an insult.  (President Trump has called for an amendment to the bill, demanding a payout of $2,000 per person.)

These are the people who were elected to represent us.  They have forgotten.  They think they are special.  They think they are better than the hardworking people who pay their salaries, pay their staffs, pay their  transportation, pay for their offices, pay for  their mass mailings, and pay for the entitlements that enable them to feel special. 

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-upside-of-defeat/

 In an op-ed in the New York Post on Saturday, Kyle Smith—conservative critic-at-large for National Review—offered U.S. President Donald Trump “a nickel’s worth of free advice” on how to “destroy [his] enemies” after he leaves the White House.

“All you have to do is stop talking,” Smith wrote, addressing the outgoing POTUS whom he has supported over the years against “Never Trumper” hysteria. Within six months, he said, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post would be bleeding financially and otherwise.
Indeed, he pointed out, since June 2015, when Trump made his famous ride down the escalator and announced his candidacy for president, “all of these news outlets’ business models have been built around the same strategy: Turning [his] words into their profits.” Yes, every tweet—each outrageous statement—has been pounced on by the press with glee.

“And if Trump, as a private citizen, should stop providing the media with 24/7 OMG moments, what then?” asked Smith.

It’s a rhetorical question that I answered three years ago—albeit in a far less witty and acerbic style than Smith’s—but from the opposite perspective. Though, like Smith, I pointed out that members of the anti-Trump camp were in a state of exhilaration every time their nemesis opened his mouth and provided them with fodder for their attacks, I explained why I was able to identify with them.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/17/hemingway-following-awful-2020-aoc-says-pelosi-needs-to-go/

Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway and New York’s Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agree on one thing: Democratic congressional leadership has had a bad year.

Ocasio-Cortez told journalist Jeremy Scahill on Wednesday that she thinks Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) need to go.

“I think [we’re seeing] the results of just many years of power being concentrated in leadership with a lack of, you know, real grooming of the next generation of leadership,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So when you have really talented members of Congress that do come along, the opportunities to lead are so few and far between.”

On Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” Thursday morning, Hemingway agreed that 2020 was rough for congressional Democratic leadership, noting that Ocasio-Cortez’s comments show a disconnect within the party.

Democrats “technically control the House of Representatives, they’ve won the presidency, have a shot at winning the Senate,” Hemingway said. “And the party is in complete disarray because of this issue that Ocasio-Cortez is talking about.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/republican-nevertrump-postmortem

Of all the bizarrerie over the last four years, the Republican NeverTrump (RNT) phenomenon is the strangest. Pundits, commentators, and writers who self-identified as Republican and conservative did not see Donald Trump’s historic upset victory as a cause for celebration. Instead, they saw it as a disaster to be mourned and attacked with more vitriol than they ever expended on Barack Obama, not just one of the most progressive presidents ever elected, but a failure both at home and abroad.

Many factors explain this mystery, but one stands out: the revelation that there is indeed a bipartisan political guild that cares more about maintaining its own power, prestige, and perks than instituting policies that keep America safe, prosperous, and free.

It’s understandable that many establishment Republicans would be put off by Trump. He didn’t come from the world of government, universities, and think-tanks, which is unaccountable to the market and so can fail forever. He owned businesses where concrete results are more important than abstract theorizing or rhetorical cleverness. A world where common sense and practical wisdom are more useful than institutional “paradigms,” “grand narratives,” and received wisdom. It galled the intellectual clerisy to think that such a boor and Philistine could achieve the highest office in the most powerful nation in human history.

But once the primaries were over and Trump had won the nomination, these complaints over style and personality were beside the point, and reflected distaste for one particular kind of American identity shared by a critical mass of the over 60 million voters who put him in office. More important was one simple fact: Trump’s victory meant that Hillary Clinton, a deep-swamp creature likely to continue the disastrous polices of Barack Obama––a tax-and-spend, hyper-regulatory, civil society-intruding degradation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights––would leave our political stage, taking her unpleasant personality, sordid ambition, mediocre achievements, and history of felonious behavior with her.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schumers-wages-of-resistance-11607279227?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Barrasso of Wyoming is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Thousands of angry protesters gathered on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, N.Y. Camped out in front of Chuck Schumer’s apartment building, the mob used bullhorns and signs to jeer the Senate minority leader.

The activist left was sending a message to Democrats: President Trump was unacceptable. They accused Mr. Schumer and his colleagues of being soft. Signs urged him to “show some spine” and to resist “by any means necessary.”

Nearly every Democratic senator eventually complied. Oregon’s Sen. Jeff Merkley vowed to obstruct the president’s nominees purely as “a protest” against Republicans. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut promised to “shatter precedent” to stymie nominations.

The result was unprecedented. As had been tradition, Presidents Clinton and Obama had nearly all of their cabinet confirmed in January. Mr. Clinton had 13 out of 14; Mr. Obama, 11 out of 15. Senate Democrats made sure Mr. Trump had only three.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been looking miserable lately, and for good reason.

In what should theoreticaly be her season of jubilation, supposedly ousting President Trump, she may well be looking at her own ouster, too.

The House election results are still rolling in, and all are bearing bad news for her supposed House majority.

According to RealClearPolitics, the score stands at 221 House Democrats, and opposition 209 Republicans. Democrats have (so far) lost 9 seats and unseated no Republicans. Republicans, meanwhile, have gained 8. Apparently Joe Biden had absolutely no coattails, which is weird stuff in a presidential election, unless maybe something funny was going on.

Five races have yet to be tallied, two in California, one in Iowa, one in New York and one in New Jersey. All show the Republican, so far, ahead, or else unexpectedly close and in the running to overtake. California’s 21st district, won by ballot harvestors in 2018 by Democrat T.J. Cox, now shows Republican David Valadao, an authentic farmer who held the seat earlier, ahead by 50.6% to Cox’s 49.4, with now 99% of the ballots counted, presumably even from Kern County, which encompasses Bakersfield, where leftists were supposedly abundant. Yeah, it could flip. But it might not.

Same deal in California’s 25th, where Republican Mike Garcia leads Democrat Kristy Smith by 104 votes, a technical tie with 99% of the vote in, and a few hundred more to be counted. The district encompasses places like Simi Valley, home of the Reagan Library, parts of Ventura County and Santa Clarita, which are prosperous places with adjacent right-wing back boonies, and far from solidly blue places.

  https://www.jpost.com/author/ruthie-blum

To justify their backing of Joe Biden, beyond their aversion to US President Donald Trump’s tweets and demeanor, liberal American Jews and left-wing Israelis have been highlighting the Democratic candidate’s lifelong support for Israel.

With most pre-election polls indicating that a blue wave was about to wash away the past four years of a Trump-led White House and Republican-dominated Senate, media outlets the world over rallied to help that happen. In Israel, the three main Israeli TV channels prepared fawning features on Biden to air on the night of November 3, while those Americans who hadn’t voted early or by mail were still in the process of lining up to perform their civic duty in person.

What these pieces of “objective” journalism had in common was the absence of aspersions on the man’s life, political career or devotion to the Jewish state. Nor was mention made of the documents revealed on October 14 by the New York Post – suppressed by Twitter and mainstream media outlets – pointing to serious corruption on his part.

The thrill of Israeli members of the press and punditocracy at the near-certainty of a Trump-free universe was surpassed only by that of their counterparts in the US. That the polls turned out to be wrong about what promised to be a slam-dunk Biden victory elicited many a disappointed sigh and nervous furrow of the brow.