RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/will-bidens-war-on-the-suburbs-become-a-campaign-issue/?utm_

In remarks Tuesday in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump promised to reverse what is arguably the most radical action of the Obama-Biden administration: promulgation of the rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). Trump went beyond his tweet of a couple of weeks ago, when he said he “may” end the rule. Now he says he will in fact “take out” AFFH. This will need to be by amendment or modification, since the Obama-Biden AFFH is actually a wild over-reading of the phrase “affirmatively further” in current law.

The president said that coming from New York, he’d been following the Westchester County controversy for years. As I explain in Spreading the Wealth, the Obama administration ran a test of what would someday become his AFFH rule in suburban Westchester County, New York. The Obama administration effectively stripped Westchester County of its zoning power, forced it to spend tens of millions of dollars on high-density low-income housing, then ordered it to “affirmatively advertise” that housing to non-residents. In effect, the federal government took over Westchester and forced it to suspend its own laws and spend its tax money on non-residents. All this occurred without evidence, or even allegation, of housing discrimination. Westchester was actually one of the most diverse counties in New York at the time. Such demographic “imbalances” as existed there were a function of economics, not discrimination.

After the Obama-Biden administration intervened, Westchester’s local government flipped from Democratic to Republican. Rob Astorino was elected county executive and fought the Obama administration for years, although his hands were largely tied by a legal agreement signed by the previous Democratic county executive. (Astorino is now running for state senate, by the way, in a hotly contested race.) That gives you a sense of how powerful AFFH can be as a political issue. AFFH flipped the county that Bill and Hillary Clinton call home from blue to red. The question is whether President Trump will make AFFH and Biden’s anti-suburban plans an issue in the presidential election. The answer, I think, is “probably.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victoria-taft/2020/07/14/wow-gop-never-trumpers-are-paid-by-a-radical-leftist-billionaire-n640740

They sound like Leftists. They act like Leftists. And now we learn that the Never-Trumper group called “The Lincoln Project” is funded by a Leftist billionaire, according to a new book on the subject.

And a collective “Oh, it all makes sense to me now!” just spread over the land.

The project features, among others, GOP political strategists Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, the Washington Post’s “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin, former “Weekly Standard” editor Bill Kristol, and disgruntled attorney, George “Mr. Kellyanne” Conway, who spends nearly all of his time trying to ruin his wife’s White House career.

Judging by their antics, the anti-Trump collective is like a latter-day mix of political saboteur Donald Segretti, lawless Yippie Abbie Hoffman, yellow gossip columnist Walter Winchell and political monkey-wrencher Saul Alinsky. Their goal is to do everything they can to cost Donald Trump the White House in 2020 in order to burn the GOP brand. So that’s why they’re supporting Joe Biden.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/14/has-democratic-partys-far-left-hijacked-joe-bidens-presidential-campaign/

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems quite content to run for the presidency from the depths of his home basement. Maybe that’s not so surprising, given recent indications that he no longer actually controls his presidential campaign.

Sadly, even with the help of a Teleprompter, Biden seems incapable of speaking these days without losing track, going wildly astray and muttering nonsense as he tosses one word salad after another.

Two recent examples stand out.

Queried in late April by a Miami TV newsman about his son Hunter’s highly questionable and possibly illegal business dealings with Ukraine, Obama’s former No. 2 responded: “My son’s business dealings were not anything where everybody that he’s talking about, not even remotely, number one.”

That’s an exact transcription. Go ahead. Make sense of it.

Just weeks earlier, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” he had this to say about the COVID-19 pandemic:

“We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and elections, and at the same time correct the public health.”

We’re not poking fun here. This may or may not be incipient signs of senility or a more serious medical condition in someone who is, after all, now nearing 78 years old.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-foreign-policy-blast-from-the-past-11594680389?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Optimism is a rare commodity in this difficult year, but I came away from a conversation with Anthony Blinken, Joe Biden’s senior foreign-policy adviser, believing the former vice president’s campaign is confident that the old-time Democratic policy playbook will bring success abroad and at home.

This sort of optimism, the belief that working hard and sticking to your principles will bring results, is a defining characteristics of the American spirit. Pessimists don’t change countries and cultures in hope of building a better life. And a nation of pessimists produces few world-class innovators and entrepreneurs.

In foreign affairs the case for optimism is limited. A nation of pessimists wouldn’t have come up with the Marshall Plan—but neither would it have overthrown Moammar Gadhafi, certain a more peaceful Libya would emerge.

Team Biden’s optimism reflects a faith in the classic pillars of Cold War-era Democratic policy: At home, a regulated market economy and government that attends to the concerns of key Democratic interest groups can produce the middle-class affluence that makes the U.S. model admired and envied around the world. Abroad, the principles of liberal multilateralism—supplemented when absolutely necessary by the American military and a willingness to use it—can bring a critical mass of the world’s powers into broad alignment with core U.S. objectives.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/12/trump-needs-to-scale-the-real-wall-of-2020/

The president should emphasize not just the efficacy of his administration but its effects on real people. Focus on “Restoration 2021.”

Donald Trump is trying to break through a 2020 wall. 

By January 2019, after over three years of failed efforts to impeach him, sue him, indict him, impoverish him, and destroy him, the Left had failed. The economy was booming. Trump’s tweets were mostly bragging about his accomplishments. And the Left was dumbfounded that both impeachment and Mueller, in Nietzschean fashion, had only made Trump stronger.

Then came an unexpected trifecta catastrophe—plague, a quarantine-induced recession, and a leftist cultural revolution in the streets. Suddenly, the Left saw all of that as a gift that might succeed where its own self-constructed melodramas had failed.

By late May, Trump’s polls had dived. 

His enemies declared this time he was really, actually, truly finished. NeverTrumpers hit the media to boast they were finally redeemed. 

The discredited pollsters of 2016 reemerged, this time even convincing once-burned, never-again Las Vegas bookies that Trump was toast. Leftists, depressed over the progressive implosion in the Democratic primaries, now rebranded Joe Biden as a useful septuagenarian. He could carry them to victory before being pushed aside. 

Biden was put on ice, a virtual prisoner of the Democratic establishment, who gave him teleprompted messages and pre-canned interviews to stumble through on Skype. “Keep silent, keep hidden,” was the motto of Biden’s keepers.

Trump railed. He fumed. As a furious Achilles, he tweeted about the unfairness of it all—how he had defeated concocted attacks, but suddenly a virus from his nemesis China had unleashed sheer madness, with him as its target.

To get back on track, Trump almost alone became the defender of tradition under assault, of security, and safety. He deplored the statue toppling, the madness of cancel culture, the racial obsessions of the Black Lives Matter/Antifa cultural revolution. He praised America’s goodness and reminded the country it was good without having to be perfect. And still, the Left hobbled him. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/magic-democratic-party-frontpagemagcom/

The most famous technique magicians use to fool you is distraction. They distract you with one hand while doing their trick with the other. The amazing thing is how it keeps working even though we all know about it. The next magic act comes around, and we still look at the hand that the magician wants us to watch while ignoring the hand weaving the deceit.

Nobody understands this better than the Democrat Party. Democrat mayors preside over the most horrific dysfunction and violence in America. Recently President Trump called them out, claiming that the top 20 most violent cities in the USA were run by Democrats. The Democrats were livid. One of their favorite propaganda outlets, the Washington Post, “fact-checked” Trump and declared him wrong, saying: “Trump keeps claiming that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They aren’t.” But the article went on to document (with supporting data) that 17 of the top 20 are indeed actually the most dangerous.

Since many of us cannot witness what’s actually going on in Democrat-run cities, their mayors can distract us with irrelevant issues while hiding the carnage wrought by their own policies. Search for “Chicago gangs,” for example, and you’ll see a huge number of sites dedicated to the subject. High on your list will be a page called “chicagoganghistory.com.” This site alone is breathtaking in its depth; try navigating its menus.