RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/medicare-for-all-politica

Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren fell for the fool’s gold of socialized medicine.

Pundits have a ready explanation when one of their favorites loses or ends a campaign: The voters just didn’t get to know the candidate the way media do. He or she was too wonky, or eager to please, or insular, or revealing, or uncertain for the masses. The electoral process made it impossible for him or her to connect with voters. The classic example is Hillary Clinton, who has reintroduced herself to the public umpteen times over the decades. A friend who knows her once told me I would like Clinton if only I got to meet her informally. I had a good laugh at that one.

A similar lament greeted the news that Kamala Harris had dropped out of the Democratic primary. Last year, CNN ranked Harris first among the contenders. Now it’s back to the Senate. The Washington Free Beacon compiled a short video of media types saddened by Harris’s departure. A New York Times op-ed asked, “Did We Ever Know the Real Kamala Harris?” Writers for the Washington Post said that Harris failed because she lacked “a theory of the case” and wasn’t able “to explain why she was running for president.” Yes, it helps to have a reason for your candidacy beyond media reports that you check all the right boxes. But the argument that Harris flopped because of a failure to communicate lets her off easy.

The Times piece didn’t mention the policy initiative upon which Harris launched her campaign: Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-All legislation, which would eliminate private and employer-based health insurance. Harris signed on as a cosponsor to the bill last April. It’s haunted her ever since. Medicare for All might look like the sort of “big, structural change” that sets progressive hearts aflutter. For most voters it causes arrhythmia.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/cory-booker-gonna-wear-out-out-race-card-daniel-greenfield/

Back in the day, Senator Cory Booker kept trying to play the race card against Joe Biden, but was casually brushed off. Senator Kamala Harris was having too much fun playing the race card.

Now she’s out and Booker is gonna wear out that card.

“I’m just going to say it plain,” Booker said. “It is a problem that we now have an overall campaign for the 2020 presidency that has more billionaires in it than black people.”

I think Booker is actually quite happy that it’s working out that way. Even as he’s trying to portray Kamala as a martyr to American racism.

“It is a problem when an immensely qualified, widely supported, truly accomplished black woman running to lead the party — a party that is significantly empowered by black women voters — didn’t have the resources that she needed to continue here in Iowa,” he said, referencing U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, who ended her presidential campaign earlier this week.

Kamala had raised $11 million. She didn’t have the poll numbers to continue.

But please, send Cory donations on her behalf.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/academia_dies_on_the_hill.html

The Democratic-controlled Congress convened a panel of legal experts on Wednesday to inform the debate on the case for impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.  Opinions will differ as to the value of this testimony insofar as the impeachment debate is concerned, but there can be no real question that this is a microcosm of what is wrong with academia today.  Four academics showed up on the Hill, but only one scholar was present: Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University School of Law.  The other three, Karlan, Feldman, and Gerhardt, were merely Democratic activists masquerading as objective academics.  Unfortunately, what the country observed on Capitol Hill Wednesday is precisely what goes on every day on university campuses across America: liberal academics grooming converts for the cause, all the while claiming to be a voice for true scholarship.

Professor Turley informed the panel that he was not a supporter of Mr. Trump, that, in fact, he had “voted against Mr. Trump.”  His word choice is important because it attests to something far more than the fact that he was not a supporter of Trump; he was against Trump.  And yet, Professor Turley went on to admonish the Congress that just as his personal views of Trump do not inform his views on the merits of impeachment, neither should their personal views regarding Trump inform their votes.

Trump’s call to Ukrainian president Zelensky was not “perfect,” according to Professor Turley, but neither was it impeachable.  To state Professor Turley’s views regarding impeachment succinctly, the standard for what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” should not be party-specific.  Does anyone really believe that impeachment proceedings would be underway if Mr. Obama had made a similar call to Zelensky?  

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-warren/support-for-elizabeth-warren-drops-to-lowest-since-august-in-white-house-race-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Y92UL

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Support for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren dropped nationally to its lowest level in four months, and nearly one in three potential Democratic primary voters say they do not know which candidate to pick with the first nominating contests less than two months away, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/if-the-republican-party-is-dying-why-are-their-governors-so-popular/

A new St. Leo’s poll in Florida shows Governor Ron DeSantis sporting an approval rating of 68 percent (with a disapproval of 20 percent). What’s most impressive about these numbers is that in every demographic that matters, DeSantis is polling above 50 percent — with both sexes, Hispanic (67 percent approval) and black voters (63), and among both parties.

When it comes to governorships, Florida isn’t an outlier. The last time the Morning Consult poll tabulated a list of the most popular governors, the top 14 — and 18 of the top 20 — were Republicans. These Republicans govern in states that have highly diverse electorates, from Alabama to Vermont.

Which is weird, because this very week, progressives at the New York Times and the Atlantic were assuring us that the GOP was so reviled nationally — and its agenda so toxic to the average American — that the party has been compelled to hide from “democratic accountability.”

Naturally, Charlie Baker can’t support the same policies in Massachusetts that Mark Gordon can in Wyoming. And some of these governors have their agendas tempered by Democratic legislatures, while others do not. But, like DeSantis, all of them tend to govern with a conservative disposition, and most of them openly advocate a conservative agenda.

How many progressive governors do you see near the top of the list? Kate Brown of Oregon, perhaps the most progressive governor in the country, is also one of its least popular. Gavin Newsom, who’s pushed a slate of left-wing policies, owns an approval rating in heavily liberal California that’s on par with Donald Trump’s national numbers. “Rational, pragmatic, progressive” J. B. Pritzker’s polls are horrible. Andrew Cuomo’s numbers are brutal. The only Democrats in the top 20 are Steve Bullock and John Carney, two of the most moderate liberal governors in the country.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-attempts-meet-greet-farmer

Oh, to be that farmer in the Corn Stalk Cafe.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about, well, Joe Biden probably wishes he doesn’t. And it’s just as well, because the farmer apparently doesn’t know who Joe Biden is, either.

In case the name of the establishment didn’t clue you in, Biden is on another sweep through Iowa, a state where he currently sits in fourth place and is trending downward, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

In fact, the only reason he can’t really get lower is that Amy Klobuchar is in fifth place and, let’s face facts — Amy-mentum just isn’t happening.

Campaigning in Iowa means plenty of low-level meet-and-greets, and one of them was at the Corn Stalk Cafe in Shelby, according to TheBlaze.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/02/democratic-presidential-hopefuls-meet-with-terrorist-run-pay-to-slay-group/

Why did Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders meet with a legal advocacy group founded by a convicted terrorist and that functions as a de facto ‘martyrs fund’ for American jihadists?

“There’s no other conference like this,” the Coalition for Civil Freedoms (CCF) claimed ahead of its ninth annual Family Conference and Lobby Day in Washington D.C. last month. You can say that again.

CCF is a legal advocacy and support group founded by a convicted terrorist that functions as a de facto “martyrs fund” for American jihadists and their families. Would-be suicide bombers, terrorism financiers, and jihadist recruiters can rest easy knowing that CCF will pay their prison commissary and provide for their families should they end up on the wrong side of the law.

However, this “pay-to-slay” program doesn’t seem to alarm a handful of U.S. lawmakers and their staff — including the office of Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who welcomed CCF to Capitol Hill on October 28 and lent a sympathetic ear to this terrorist fan club and lobby group.

CCF spent three days grooming terrorist next-of-kin on how to effectively lobby Congress, before parading this delegation through the Capitol Building to meet with U.S. lawmakers and propose legislation. The Entrapment and Government Overreach (EGO) Rel͏i͏ef Act would deprive law enforcement of some of the most effective prosecutorial tools at their disposal, effectively prohibiting the use of undercover informants and decriminalizing material support for terrorism.

But that’s not the worst of it. “If the EGO bill passes, it may be possible to bring many, if not most, preemptive cases back into court to be reevaluated under the new standards imposed by EGO,” said Leena Al-Arian, CCF associate director and the daughter of CCF founder and President Sami Al-Arian.

Al-Arian has a personal stake in reversing terrorism convictions. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring “to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Specially Designated Terrorist.” The former University of South Florida professor was later deported to Turkey, where he gave a speech in a 2018 calling the United States “our enemy.” Qatar, which consistently offers a haven to terrorist leaders from Hamas and the Taliban, continues to provide the elder Al-Arian a platform to demonize Israel and the West.