RUTHFULLY YOURS

When Sarah Palin first came on the scene as the surprise vice presidential pick of the McCain campaign, she was a breath of fresh air. As she gave her address at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, many Tea Party activists who were themselves political neophytes from humble backgrounds heard themselves in her folksy Alaskan twang. It was this sort of kinship which prompted so many to defend Palin against attacks from the political establishment. She was us. We were her. An attack on her intelligence was an attack on ours. We knew implicitly that the same people who looked down their noses at her would just as soon scoff at us. So we circled the wagons.

Oh how times have changed. Over the years since, Palin has devolved into a self-parody that fulfills the caricature her critics once crafted. In a new interview with the Associated Press, she demonstrates as much in remarks regarding the Republican presidential nomination process.

From U.S. News and World Report:

Voters will “rise up” in opposition if Republican power brokers try to take the presidential nomination away from Donald Trump or Ted Cruz at the GOP convention this summer, Sarah Palin said Thursday in a wide-ranging interview.

The 2008 vice presidential nominee told The Associated Press that GOP voters have the right to decide the party’s nominee and will rebel if House Speaker Paul Ryan or some other “white knight” is chosen at a contested convention. Ryan said this week he will not seek or accept the nomination.

Palin said voters know better than to be fooled by party leaders.

“How dare they?” Palin asked, denouncing “arrogant political operatives who underestimate the wisdom of the people.”

It takes an immigrant like me to parse the poison that Bernie Sanders is peddling to the naive youth of this country. It takes someone who has experienced socialism’s failures firsthand—as I did, initially as a small child, later as a young adult—to see why Sen. Sanders is succeeding: We elders, immigrants and native-born alike, have failed to teach our children and grandchildren about the economic history and false promises of the myriad forms of socialism that infest our world.

More than 75 years ago, I landed at Ellis Island as a 6-year-old child. My family had fled the despotism of National Socialism that had been foisted onto the gullible (albeit literate) German people. We were far from the only victims of collectivism. As all of us know but some refuse to admit, collectivism destroyed the economies of places like China, Russia and Cuba, and ruined the lives of millions of people.

Nine years after I arrived in America, the new state of Israel came into existence, making Jews like me both proud and curious. When I was 18, imbued with idealistic fervor, I decided to help the young nation grow and prosper by working the soil. Off I went to further the goals of social justice by joining a kibbutz, or communal farm. There the painful reality of the maxim Karl Marx popularized, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” hit home.

As an example of kibbutz ideology: Does it make sense for a person running the washing machines in the laundry to be receiving exactly the same pay and living benefits as someone who might be the community doctor after going to medical school? That may sound like an extreme example, but the same principles apply throughout the economic structure of a collectivist economy. Unlike Chinese or Russian collectivism, Israel’s was voluntary—but insane nonetheless.

I left Israel three years later, in 1954, because I was an American citizen and the time had come for me to serve my country. I was drafted and inducted into the U.S. Army. After two years of active duty, stationed back in my native Germany, I realized that my future lay in the capitalist U.S., not in Israel.

I came to see that I needed a college degree to get ahead in the competitive society of my home country. Because I had to work during the day to support myself and my family, I attended classes in the evening, taking eight years to get a bachelor’s degree in finance and an M.B.A. While going to night school, I got my first Wall Street job. CONTINUE AT SITE

First, there was Jim Gilmore. Then, there was Ben Carson. Now, there’s John Kasich. This Republican nomination cycle boasted a bumper crop of candidates with delusions of grandeur. Two of them, at least, had the sense to pack it in.

Not the governor of Ohio, who has already been mathematically eliminated from securing the Republican nomination outright. At present, John Kasich has won only one state (his home state) and four — count ’em: four — non–Buckeye State counties. He hasn’t won a delegate since March 15. And one week after Ohio, he came in fourth in Arizona in a three-man race, losing by 23,000 votes to Marco Rubio, who by then had dropped out.

What’s the opposite of momentum?

RELATED: Why Won’t John Kasich Go Away?

With Republicans preparing for a string of states likely to prove friendly to Donald Trump — New York, Trump’s home state, votes next Tuesday, followed a week later by the “Acela Corridor” (Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland) and Pennsylvania — this might seem like Kasich’s time to shine. He’s a moderate man for moderate states, right? Maybe not. A new PPP poll has Kasich up on Cruz in New York by just five percentage points (25 to 20), and a recent Fox News poll has Kasich leading Cruz by just two points — and both of them lapped by Trump.

Meanwhile, one gets the impression that Kasich isn’t even trying to win. The governor failed to file a full slate of delegates for the Maryland primary, meaning that even if Kasich wins the state, he won’t be able to claim all of its delegates. At RedState, Moe Lane wrote in March: “There’s no really good way to say this, so I’ll just be blunt: Depending on where you live in Maryland, you will be provably throwing away your vote if you vote for John Kasich” (the emphasis is his).

And recall: This is the same candidate who didn’t collect enough signatures to get on the ballot in Illinois or Pennsylvania. (The only reason his name appeared in Illinois is that no candidate challenged him; and in Pennsylvania, the Rubio camp dropped its challenge.)

If Kasich’s “strategy” is unclear, so is his ultimate aim. Maybe he thinks he can win at a contested convention, that 1,237 delegates come to their senses in Cleveland and spirit him to the nomination on the basis of his generally favorable polling against Hillary Clinton in hypothetical head-to-head matchups. The GOP nomination might be “a bizarre process,” as Kasich said on CNN earlier this week. But it’s not that bizarre.

Cosmopolitan published an interview on Tuesday that I think was with Hillary Clinton — although I can’t be completely sure, seeing as her answers sounded more like they had come from a robot than an actual human being.

I’m not exaggerating. This interview was so boring and so unproductive that Cosmo clearly struggled to even come up with a headline for it. After all, the one that it went with — “Hillary Clinton Responds to Bernie Sanders’ Remark That She’s ‘Condescending’ to Young People” — was not even really accurate.

Sure, Hillary was asked about the remark, but she didn’t exactly answer. In fact, she exactly didn’t answer, responding with “Well, he’s criticized me for so many things in the last week, I’m not going to respond to his comments.”

Then — just like a perfectly functioning machine — she swooped in with a preprogrammed political talking point:

“I will say this,” she said. “I’m excited that so many young people are involved in this campaign.”

“I think it’s great if they support me, if they support Senator Sanders, the fact that they are committed to being part of the political process is a great development,” she added.

Whoa . . . so Hillary’s thoughts on this are, in essence: I like young people. It is good for young people to like politics. It is good. Hot take, Hil!

Her answer to a question about a controversial skit she performed this weekend with Mayor de Blasio that featured a joke criticized by some in the media as racist was equally (read: not at all) insightful:

“He has addressed it, and I will really defer to him because it is something that he’s already talked about.”

As the New York primary approaches, Empire State residents with international connections may wish to consider the implications of a Donald Trump presidency for lands overseas that are dear to many of their hearts.

Trump wants to gut NATO. He has openly expressed admiration for Russian revanchist strongman Vladimir Putin, and he has hired several Kremlin-allied persons as his top advisors. These include Carter Page, an investor in the Russian gas giant, Gazprom, and a vocal supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Paul Manafort, a henchman of deposed Ukrainian dictator Victor Yanukovych, on whose behalf Putin’s invasion was initiated. Furthermore, Trump has been endorsed by Aleksandr Dugin, the totalitarian “Eurasianist” philosopher and geostrategist, and a leading advocate for the policy of expanding Russia into a transcontinental Eurasian bloc incorporating most of Europe and Asia.

What do these affiliations mean for several countries that could soon be in the Kremlin’s line of fire?

Let’s start with Poland. Polish independence was extinguished in the late 18th century, and with the exception of a 20-year period between the wars was not fully recovered until the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. Putin wants to restore the Soviet bloc, or at the very least, the Czarist empire, which included not only Ukraine, but most of Poland, and the Baltic states as well. This means that, as far as Putin is concerned, Polish independence must be crushed. His potential methods for achieving this objective include both military and economic means.

Russia’s military dominance in the region is obvious. Its only potential counter is NATO, an alliance that Trump says is obsolete. The threat of Russian military aggression against Poland and the Baltic states had been greatly enhanced by the failure of the Obama administration to honor America’s commitment to defend Ukraine with more than token support. Trump’s advisor Carter Page, however, has attacked Obama for defending Ukraine too strongly, with the administration’s economic sanctions against Gazprom no doubt being particularly objectionable. Such an approach — without NATO protection or even the threat of retaliatory sanctions — would make a Trump administration a virtual green light for further military aggression by the Kremlin in Eastern Europe.

I wouldn’t say that the GOP is falling in love with Ted Cruz, but maybe it’s falling in like.

In arguably the most improbable political season of our lifetimes, this fact has to rank high on the list of things no one could have seen coming. If they gave out report cards for first-term senators, Cruz would get an “F” in the “plays well with others” category. Party leaders believed that his 2013 gambit to shut down the government over Obamacare was a disaster for everyone but Cruz, and they have harbored a not-so-secret disdain for him since.

But that’s all over — at least for now.

Like Perseus pulling Medusa’s head out of a sack to petrify his enemies, Cruz has been able to dangle the prospect of a President Trump to strike fear in the hearts of even his biggest detractors.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) once said choosing between Donald Trump and Cruz was like choosing between being shot or poisoned. Graham chose his poison. He’s out there raising money for Cruz. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), whose hatred for Cruz was the stuff of Sicilian blood feuds, seems to have reconciled himself to the fact that Cruz is the only person who can stop Trump. McConnell’s definitely not in love, but he recognizes that these are the cards we’ve all been dealt.

RELATED: Cruz Is a Safer General-Election Bet than Trump

Team Cruz fears that people such as McConnell will use the convention in Cleveland this summer to reshuffle the deck and get a new deal — a new candidate more palatable to the establishment. “There is still distrust over whether or not the party is actually willing to accept Cruz as the nominee or if they’re using him to shut down Trump only to then stab Cruz in the back come summer,” Erick Erickson, a conservative talk-show host and Cruz backer, told the Washington Post.

The concern is understandable but overblown. Although a contested convention is likely, the “white knight” scenario, in which someone other than Cruz, Trump, or John Kasich swoops in and “steals” the nomination, is not.

The presidential primaries are in New York now, with it not beyond imagining that Donald of Trump Tower will sweep the state’s 95 delegates Tuesday by winning all of its 27 congressional districts. If so, Ted Cruz can blame it and his possible third-place finish on that dumb remark about “New York values.”

He says it won him the Iowa caucuses. We’re not in Iowa anymore, senator.

Sen. Cruz had a point, but he blew it by not describing it so that even many New Yorkers would agree.

One example: The greatest moral issue in America is four decades of failed inner-city public schools. In New York, local liberals won’t lift a finger for minority-district schools in east Brooklyn, Harlem or the Bronx.

Instead, Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, like Jerry Brown in blue California, stay afloat on public unions and a liberal urban sea of smug, yuppie self-absorption. Donald Trump learned this week that these people don’t even bother to vote. In 2013, New York’s now-unpopular Mayor de Blasio won with 17% of eligible voters (turnout was 24%).

New York, after its primary, will revert to its status as a blue-state automaton. Just now, New York’s political values are a good subject.

Hillary Clinton this week is defending herself against charges that as senator, she never delivered on her promises to beleaguered counties upstate. She blames George Bush’s economic policies.

More revelatory of New York values, though, is Vermonter Bernie Sanders, ranting about “Wall Street” and “bankers.” To be clear: Those people, much mocked of late for living on Park Avenue and such, annually give tens of millions to support charter schools, scholarships to parochial schools, social entrepreneurs, and innumerable nonprofits and arts institutions. Most, Republican and Democrat, would do it without the tax deduction.

Bernie is praising New York for its total ban on hydraulic fracking. Let me rephrase that as a local political value. New York City to upstate New York: Drop dead.

Donald Trump projects himself as the embodiment of “New York, New York,” the ethos of making it big as sung by Frank Sinatra at the end of Yankees home games: “Top of the list, King of the hill, A-number-one!” CONTINUE AT SITE

Dear Donald Trump:

You are a great deal-maker. By your own account you’re the greatest dealmaker of the 20th century, and almost certainly the greatest dealmaker of the 21st century, even though it isn’t quite over yet. The Art of the Deal is your campaign playbook, as CBS News reported April 1. You have promised great trade deals with China, a great deal with Mexico to build a wall on the border, and other great deals on theSupreme Court, peace in the Middle East, healthcare and everything else that anyone has asked you about.

How would you like to the greatest dealmaker of all time?

You can go to Cleveland on July 18 and make the most stupendous deal in all of human history. Lots of people get to be president of the United States, but there can only be one all-time greatest dealmaker, and that could be you.

It’s clear that you won’t win the Republican nomination on the first ballot. Your delegates will have no obligation to vote for you on the second ballot, and a lot of them will vote for Sen. Ted Cruz on the second ballot. They probably will be joined by Marco Rubio’s 170 delegates and others.

There’s a digital outcome here.You can be the Greatest of Dealmakers, or G.o.D. — not the God, but a god, as Bill Murray said inGroundhog Day — or you can be the diametric opposite of the Greatest of Dealmakers, namely a Sore Loser, or to be precise, the Sorest Loser in the known universe. For Donald Trump to be a Loser would be tragic; for Donald Trump to be the Sorest Loser would introduce a disturbance into the space-time continuum. That can’t be allowed to happen.

No-one is saying you are a Sore Loser — yet. The risk is out there. Republican officials in a number of states complain that your organization has threatened them personally over delegate allocation. Your advisor Roger Stone warned earlier this month, “We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those [Republican convention] delegates who are directly involved in the steal [that is, not supporting Trump]. We’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them.”

It’s a strange spectacle from the vantage here in Israel: of the five remaining U.S. presidential candidates, one, lately, has been bashing Israel—and it’s the only one of the five who’s Jewish.

Bernie Sanders’s “recollection” that “over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza” during the summer 2014 war was, as many have noted, five times beyond Hamas’s claims. Sanders then changed it to “the number was I think 2100”—which is actually the figure that the UN, not known as a pro-Israel body, came up with, and even the UN said about one-third of that total were terrorists.

For the record, Israel’s Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center carried out a name-by-name analysis of the 75% of the Gaza fatalities who could be identified, and found that, of those, 55% were combatants. (Here former U.S. Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey says that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths” to limit civilian casualties in Gaza.)

Sanders’s astonishing ignorance—he’s been a U.S. senator since 2007—was further revealed when, asked what he thought of Michael Oren’s criticism of his inflated Gaza figures, he answered, “Who is Mr. Oren?” Oren is, of course, the former high-profile Israeli ambassador to the U.S. (2009-2013) and author of the bestselling book Ally on the Obama administration’s hostility toward Israel.

But Sanders’s ignorance is not just a personal foible. When it comes to Israeli issues, Sanders is an ideologue. He parrots the standard ideological line of people who do not know what they’re talking about and don’t feel they need to know what they’re talking about, since the ideology comes prepackaged. Trying to add nuance, Sanders said Israel “has a 100%…right to live in freedom,” then added: “we will not succeed to ever bring peace into that region unless we also treat the Palestinians with dignity and respect.”

There are many ways to reply to that, such as: the Palestinians already receive more aid per capita than any other group; they have already been offered, and rejected, statehood far more than any other people in history (the offers run from 1937 to the present); in the existing Palestinian entities of Gaza and the (West Bank) Palestinian Authority, women, gays, Christians, people of dissenting views, and others are treated with something other than “dignity and respect”—a situation certain to be perpetuated if the Palestinians attain independent statehood; and so on.