RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/07/democratic-primary-2020-095090

DAVENPORT, Iowa — The new year is taking the presidential primary to a dark place in the nation’s first caucus state.

President Donald Trump’s impending impeachment trial and fear of war with Iran — as well as the Australia wildfires and their implications for climate change — quickly cast a pall over a contest in which Democrats are already wracked with uncertainty about which candidate has the best chance of defeating Trump.

All across Iowa hangs an air of heightened distress, which the candidates are readily leaning into.

“I tell you all these things not to get you nervous, but to get you depressed,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, speaking about climate change, said at a town hall meeting in Grundy Center, Iowa, over the weekend.

Hours later in Des Moines, it was Joe Biden describing the state of Trump’s presidency more broadly as “extremely, extremely worrisome.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren admonished supporters in Davenport that “this is a time of crisis in this country.”

Democrats have fretted for more than a year about how to choose a nominee. And for those who loathe Trump, the imperative to remove him from office has remained high since the minute he won election in 2016.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/bernie_compares_soleimani_to_a_russian_dissident.html

One of the things that became very obvious about the Left beginning with 9/11 is that Leftists consider anyone who hates America to be virtuous in some way. It’s irrelevant to them that some America-haters are, within their own countries, people who are legitimately fighting for freedom, while others are actively seeking to impose totalitarianism wherever they can. To a Leftist, America hating is the beginning and the end. Actors’ ideologies and motives are irrelevant.

This world view is how Leftists can come out with statments that are morally blind. Many of us remember that Michael Moore compared the 9/11 killers, who dreamed of a world subordinate to sharia’s brutalities, to America’s Minutemen, who dreamed of a world of small government, individual liberty, and religious freedom. 

We also see this moral blindness Bernie Sanders, one of the Democrat frontrunners. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN about Trump’s decision to terminate Soleimani, Bernie Sanders likened Soleimani, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hand, to a dissident in a totalitarian country fighting against his or her own repressive government:

. . . but this guy is, you know, was as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government. And you unleash . . . then, if China does that, you know, if Russia does that. You know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aoc-takes-aim-at-party-leadership-for-tolerating-moderates-democrats-can-be-too-big-of-a-tent/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) criticized the Democratic party for its tolerance of relative moderates, saying her own party has become “too big of a tent” in an interview published Monday.

“For so long, when I first got in, people were like, ‘Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left?’ And what people don’t realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but it’s on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez told New York Magazine. “So the Democratic Party has a role to play in this problem, and it’s like we’re not allowed to talk about it.”

The freshman lawmaker also lashed out at party leadership for their intolerance of internal criticism, saying “we’re not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does.”

Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the reaction elicited by her 2018 election as proof that Democrats cater too often to conservative interests, and that the party’s progressive shift was helping Democrats learn “to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buttigiegs-war-and-the-shortest-way-home-11578355312

“Seriously? This failed small town mayor who trades off of essentially non-existent military experience has people who want him to be President?” D.P.S.

When Mayor Pete Buttigieg talks about his military service, his opponents fall silent, the media fall in love, and his political prospects soar. Veterans roll their eyes.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Mr. Buttigieg Sunday if President Trump “deserves some credit” for the strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. “No,” the candidate replied, “not until we know whether this was a good decision and how this decision was made.” He questioned whether “it was the right strategic move” and said his own judgment “is informed by the experience of having been on one of those planes headed into a war zone.”

But Mr. Buttigieg’s stint in the Navy isn’t as impressive as he makes it out to be. His 2019 memoir is called “Shortest Way Home,” an apt description of his military service. He entered the military through a little-used shortcut: direct commission in the reserves. The usual route to an officer’s commission includes four years at Annapolis or another military academy or months of intense training at Officer Candidate School. ROTC programs send prospective officers to far-flung summer training programs and require military drills during the academic year. Mr. Buttigieg skipped all that—no obstacle courses, no weapons training, no evaluation of his ability or willingness to lead. Paperwork, a health exam and a background check were all it took to make him a naval officer.

He writes that his reserve service “will always be one of the highlights of my life, but the price of admission was an ongoing flow of administrativia.” That’s not how it’s supposed to work. The paperwork isn’t the price of admission but the start of a long, grueling test.

https://babylonbee.com/news/castros-campaign-fails-when-democrats-realize-his-first-name-isnt-fidel

U.S.—Julian Castro was forced to pull out of the Democratic primaries after Democrats suddenly realized his first name wasn’t Fidel.

Many Dems had thrown their support behind Castro, excited that the legendary human rights activist and Commie was running for president. They were much less enthused to learn it was actually Julian Castro who was running, a guy they’d never heard of, and presumably not quite as far left as Fidel.

“Castro seemed to be running on the star power of his last name alone,” said one commentator. “Faking Democrats into believing you’re a Communist dictator can jumpstart a campaign, but it just isn’t enough to carry you over the finish line. As soon as Democrats realize you’re not the guy who brought Cuba into its golden age of being a communist utopia, they’re going to move onto another candidate.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/aoc-to-lose-her-congressional-district-after-2020-census/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a rising star in the Democratic Party, but the district she represents could potentially not exist following the 2020 Census since New York is expected to lose as many as two House seats.

According to The City, nearly 47 percent of her district is foreign-born, and more than a quarter are not citizens—both are segments of the population that are often underrepresented in the census due to concerns of taking part in an official government count, and her district has a higher percentage than any other district. This could mean that her district could be divided up in reapportionment, meaning that she might have to face another incumbent to stay in Congress. Frank Luntz says that the state’s Democrats are actually looking to “draw out” her district.

President Trump considered an executive order to restore a question regarding citizenship to the census but ultimately backed down. Still, some say that there will be an impact on the new census, and AOC, who might be fighting for her political future, is trying hard to inform her constituents that they must participate in the census.

https://pjmedia.com/election/tulsi-gabbard-democrats-in-congress-preferred-people-rotting-in-prison-to-giving-trump-a-win/

When speaking to a group of supporters, Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard explained that hyperpartisanship has truly taken Washington D.C. hostage. An example of this extremely troubling Washington culture, she said, was that some Democrats in Congress would rather have people needlessly sitting years behind bars than help President Trump get criminal justice reform.

“A very practical thing that we need to address about the power of the two-party system,” Rep. Gabbard said, “and how hyperpartisan things have become, because those two parties basically can accept an unlimited amount of money from any individual, business, or whatever. And that creates an incredible amount of leverage for them to hold over members of Congress from both political parties, who may be looking at an issue or a vote that’s coming to the House floor based on its merits, imagine that, thinking about alright, well, how will this best impact my constituents? But if they’re thinking about voting against the party interest, then more often than not, they get the phone call or they get the tap on the shoulder on the House floor before the vote, saying, ‘Don’t you dare. If you vote against the party interest then when it’s time for your reelection and you need help, we’re not going to be there for you’.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/mayor-pete-wants-to-decriminalize-meth-coke-ecstasy-not-just-pot/

In an interview on Friday, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Church of Social Justice) clarified his drug policy, calling for decriminalization of all drugs including methamphetamine, cocaine, and ecstasy.

“Incarceration should not even be a response to drug possession,” Buttigieg told editors at the Des Moines Register.

An editor pressed him, “Is that across the board? So if it’s meth or coke or ecstasy, any drugs, if it’s possession, incarceration isn’t…”

“That’s right,” Mayor Pete said.

“I would not have said even five years ago what I believe now, which is that incarceration should not even be a response to drug possession,” the candidate added. “What I’ve seen is that while there continue to be all kinds of harms associated with drug possession and use, it’s also the case that we have created—in an effort to deal with what amounts to a public health problem—we have created an even bigger problem. A justice problem and its form of a health problem.”

Democrats had their latest debate to see who will oppose President Trump in 2020 on December 19th. Questions regarding the Trump Administration’s new policies regarding the Middle East came up–the Settlement Issue in particular. Among others, Senator Bernie Sanders and ex-VP Joe Biden offered alleged words of wisdom. Here’s some excerpts: 

“Former vice president Joe Biden said that President Trump is ‘no longer being an honest broker in Israel,’ and called promote the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ‘There’s no solution for Israel other than the two-state solution…It’s not possible to have a Jewish state…without there being a two-state solution. ‘Bibi Netanyahu and I know one another well. He knows that I think what he’s doing is outrageous. What we do is we have to put pressure constantly on the Israelis to move to a two-state solution.” https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Sanders-We-must-be-pro-Palestinian-as-well-611549 

At one time, to his credit, Senator Biden used to also talk about justice for another people—almost 40 million truly stateless Kurds, in particular. For a variety of reasons, he’s dropped that like a hot potato.

As he stated, Joe knows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu well–along with Bibi’s earlier Likud predecessor, the late prime minister, Israeli War of Independence freedom fighter for Zion Reborn…Menachem Begin. See how that relationship went in these next excerpts: