RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/02/democrats

As is their well-practiced custom, the Democratic presidential candidates continue to screech about stagnant wages, and an economy that doesn’t work for everyone.

We’re not saying they’re lying. Let’s just say the truth is out there and they’re missing it.

In the first set of debates, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said that he was seeing “every single day that this economy is not working for average Americans.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, groused about “an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great for everyone else.”

Tuesday night, the first evening of the second round of debates, Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan complained that union members’ “wages have been stagnating.” The following evening, Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama, was quite sure that “the idea that America is doing just fine is wrong.” 

It’s a familiar beef. Not long ago, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed that “for the last 45 years the average American today has not seen a nickel more in real wages than he or she got 45 years ago.” More recently, Warren has lamented “a generation of stagnant wages.”

Even President Trump has brought up “decades of flat wages.”

The numbers don’t seem to back the narrative, though. Factcheck.org, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, has shown that after falling for about 20 years, wages have been climbing since the mid-1990s.

Not all agree that the measurement used by Factcheck.org is the best way to determine if we’re better off than we were in previous decades. So forget for one moment the data and think about what today’s wages can bring compared to wages in the 1960s and 1970s.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/california-removes-arrest-reports-from-kamala-years/

A redesign of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation website will make it harder for voters to inspect Sen. Kamala Harris’s controversial record as the state’s top cop.

The department removed public access to a number of reports on incarceration in the state, including when presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D.) was California’s attorney general. Twice a year, the CDCR releases information about the number of new individuals incarcerated in the California prison system as part of its “Offender Data Points” series. These reports provide important information on demographics, sentence length, offense type, and other figures relevant to criminal justice and incarceration.

Until recently, these reports were publicly available at the CDCR’s website. A search using archive.org’s Wayback Machine reveals that as of April 25, 2019—the most recent indexed date—ODP reports were available dating back to the spring of 2009. As of August 2019, the same web page now serves only a single ODP report, the one for Spring 2019. The pre-2019 reports have been removed.

The changes matter in part because the reports contain information about Harris’s entire time as state A.G., 2011 to 2017. Harris has taken fire from multiple opponents for her “tough on crime” record as California’s top cop, an image that she has tried to shed as a far-left senator and presidential candidate.

One particularly brutal attack came Wednesday night when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hi.) laid into Harris for her record on criminal justice. Gabbard cited a Washington Free Beacon analysis — based in part on the ODP reports — that found that more than 1,500 Californians were sent to prison for marijuana-related offenses while Harris was attorney general.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-left-vs-the-crazy-left-11564701434

The nation has struggled to categorize the Democratic presidential candidates. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is some days a “populist,” others a “liberal.” Sen. Bernie Sanders is at pains to define “democratic socialism” as apart from plain, old “socialism.” The media describes Sen. Amy Klobuchar as a “centrist” or “moderate,” even as she insists on “proven progressive.”

There’s an easier taxonomy: Lefties vs. Crazy Lefties. That’s the choice Democrats have in the primaries, and the two pools from which Donald Trump’s opponent will come.

This summer’s debates have been primarily useful for highlighting how radically the Democratic Party has shifted. Barack Obama can fairly be described as the most liberal president in American history—from his command-and-control regulatory regime to the Affordable Care Act, from his tax hikes to his activist judges. Yet the entire Democratic primary field is now rebuking his agenda as small and weak, if not proto-Trumpian.

Mr. Obama avoided campaigning in 2008 on a public option, and the White House willingly jettisoned that demand in the final ObamaCare negotiations. He knew that at best it would muster 43 Senate votes, while senators like Joe Lieberman had vowed to filibuster a government “takeover” of health insurance that would balloon the national debt. House Blue Dogs similarly rejected it. Yet all 20 of the candidates on this week’s debate stage backed Medicare for any American, if not all of them.

Mr. Obama touted natural gas as a bridge fuel to a future lower-carbon environment. He kept his economy afloat by winking at the state-led fracking revolution, and since retirement he’s even (misleadingly) bragged that he was responsible for record new U.S. oil production.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/01/no-republican-talking-points-is-the-new-democrat-talking-point/

It was 10:46 p.m. when Joe Biden finished his closing statement Wednesday night. At 10:50 p.m. the former Vice President was at the edge of the stage with his arm around the Rev. Al Sharpton, the professional demagogue who with his hoaxes and hatemongering has stirred up more racial discord in America than anyone.

And Biden is the “centrist” candidate.

Government dependency, the cause of so much misery, is the air that politicians of the left breathe. Ever-increasing government control is their perennial objective, promising it will solve big problems (often of government making). But it never does.

Democrats talk about “endless wars,” but the problems of poverty and crime President Trump showcased in his explosive tweets about Baltimore must never be solved, so that the left’s war against them never ends.

Despite strides against racism and against lack of economic opportunities for the underclass that were unimaginable in the 1960s, the Democrats running for president in 2020 are more intent on expanding government and worming it into Americans’ lives than some of the most power-hungry tyrants of the past, doing so purportedly to combat the phantom of “systemic racism.”

And so, actual solutions must never be given voice. Which is why during the last two nights we witnessed the bizarre new phenomenon of the Democrats again and again accusing each other of borrowing “Republican talking points” — apparently the worst sin that can be committed.

Policing Your Fellow Democrats’ Speech

https://pjmedia.com/trending/cory-booker-calls-migrant-countries-shholes-and-no-one-cares/

I thought I hallucinated during the interminably long and boring Democrat debate part deux last night and heard Cory Booker proclaim that some home countries of migrants coming to America are “sh**holes.” But it turns out he really said that. When chastising Joe Biden for suggesting we should encourage immigration when those people have something to offer us, Booker said, “That’s playing into what Republicans want — to pit some immigrants against other immigrants. Some are from sh**hole countries and some are from working countries.”

Booker’s camp is claiming he was quoting the president, and maybe so, but it sure seems like he’s accepting the premise that some countries are less than ideal.

And why, if that statement is so offensive, would he continue to repeat it? Maybe he was dunking on the president, but it sounded like he was stating it as fact. If he was joking he needs a better joke writer.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/gabbard-calls-harriss-flailing-response-to-attacks-pathetic/

By almost every measure, and in every wrap-up, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) had a rough second debate. One of the biggest thorns in her side was Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who stayed focused on kicking Harris while she was down the day after the debate.

As I mentioned in my wrap-up of the debate last night, the whole thing was set up for Harris to have a huge, breakout performance. Instead, her voice was shaky and she was on the defensive all night, even though the majority of the attacks were aimed at former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Del.).

For most of the evening, Harris came off as a snooty, popular high school girl who had never been criticized to her face before.

Combat veteran Gabbard went straight for Harris’s greatest weaknesses: her record as San Francisco’s district attorney and then as California’s attorney general, both of which have been attacked by progressives.

The best Harris has been able to come up with to defend herself thus far is to note that she is polling better than Gabbard. That is obviously true but, as a GOP strategist told the Washington Post, it shows “that when cornered, she doesn’t perform very well.”

Seizing what may be her only moment in the primary spotlight, Gabbard was far less charitable.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/01/the-big-loser-in-last-nights-debate-was-barack-obama/

The biggest loser in the Democratic presidential primary debate was not on the stage. It was former president Barack Obama. Throughout the night, as rivals challenged Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president and current frontrunner, it took the form of blistering attacks on the Obama administration over immigration, criminal justice, and even his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

Part of this is simply the inevitable consequence of Biden, with a big lead in the polls, being everyone’s most natural target. While it’s true he has decades of political life to take aim at, his last significant political position was serving as Obama’s number two for eight years. Conceding that he and his boss did a bang-up job in the White House goes a long way towards conceding this current race to him. But last night we saw that won’t happen without a fight.

The issue is actually far deeper than electoral calculations. In the just more than a decade since Obama first sat in the Oval Office, the Democratic Party has careened to the left like a sports car with a blown tire making a pass on the Autobahn. Last night’s debates saw defenses of socialism, calls to essentially open the borders, free money for everyone, and plans for government-controlled health care with a price tag longer than a CVS receipt.

On immigration, Biden was slammed by both Cory Booker and Bill de Blasio over Obama’s extremely high number of deportations and Biden’s argument that the United States should be selective about who it lets into the country. Biden struggled to defend the so called “deporter in chief,” arguing basically that Obama made a good start with the now defunct DREAM Act allowing younger people brought here illegally a path to citizenship, but beyond that was stymied by GOP control of the House.

On criminal justice reform, it was also Booker trying to take aim at the former vice president, who argued that since 2007, which includes his entire term as vice president, he had work to eliminate discrepancies in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, among other things.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/liz-peek-democratic-debate-joe-biden-kamala-harris-cnn-trump

“Here’s where all the candidates agree: President Trump poses an existential threat to the soul of the nation, as Biden put it, and must be evicted from the White House in the 2020 election.”

Here’s a word that was not once uttered by any of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates who gathered for the second night of the debates held in Detroit Wednesday: growth.

Not a single person on the stage at the CNN debate discussed how he or she might increase the incomes of Americans or how to create jobs. Instead, inspired by the fleeting success of Sen. Kamala  Harris of California in the first round of debates, they all came armed to take down frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden.

What a sorry spectacle it was. Poor Biden, tripping over his garbled defense of his 1994 crime bill support, his vote in favor of the Iraq war, his op-ed opposing tax breaks for childcare, and so much more. Biden was attacked by nearly every rival, each one hoping that the next day’s headlines would show that he or she had successfully skewered the former vice president.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio – polling at less than 1 percent – clearly hoped that going after Biden was his ticket to the next round of debates in September (it won’t be). De Blasio attacked Biden for the former vice president’s prior enthusiasm for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bill and for the large number of deportations of illegal immigrants carried out by the Obama administration.

Harris followed up on her earlier confrontations with Biden by challenging him on his past support of the Hyde Amendment, which outlawed the use of federal funds for most abortions.

But at the end of the debate, de Blasio smugly assured Biden that “we believe in redemption,” as if he had the authority or stature to judge Obama’s veep, or Harris’s demand to know why it took Biden so long to change his opinion on Hyde.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/democratic-debate-candidates-attack-joe-biden-deportations-obama-administration/

Democratic presidential candidates had stern words for frontrunner Joe Biden during Wednesday night’s primary debate, calling on the former vice president to explain the deportations of undocumented immigrants that occurred under President Obama.

“If you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back. It’s a crime,” Biden said, disagreeing with several other candidates who said the matter should be a civil rather than a criminal issue.

President Obama, who was nicknamed the “deporter-in-chief” in 2012 by immigration rights advocates, deported or removed over 5 million undocumented immigrants, fewer than the Clinton and Bush administrations did but more than the Trump administration has.

Julian Castro, who also served in the Obama administration as Housing and Urban Development Secretary, shot back at Biden that, “open borders is a right-wing talking point, and frankly I’m disappointed that some folks, including some folks on the stage, have taken the bait.”

“It looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t,” Castro told Biden. “We need someone who actually has guts on this issue.”