RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/24/damned-if

Nancy Pelosi is between impeach and a hard place.

“You want to believe that there’s all this unease in our caucus,” an irritated House Speaker told the press on Thursday, a day when the barbs were flying between herself and President Trump, and when many House Democrats expressed impatience or even dissatisfaction with her leadership to her face.

“That simply isn’t the truth … and I say to the caucus, ‘our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power,’” she said, adding an assurance that House Democrats were “not on a path to impeachment.”

The claimed co-existence of unity and diversity is a tad removed from Ben Franklin’s call to all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. At any rate, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) wasn’t buying it. “She’s either delusional or misrepresenting where her caucus really is,” he told reporters. “Speaker Pelosi is trying to hide what I think is obvious: that the Democratic Party is hellbent on impeaching President Trump no matter what the evidence is and no matter what he does.”

This week opened a new chapter in relations between the White House and Pelosi and the Democrats’ Senate leader Chuck Schumer — with the eyes of all three on November 2020 before the arrival of even Memorial Day 2019.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/445402-senate-dems-to-house-tamp-down-the-impeachment-talk

Senate Democrats want the House to cool it on impeachment. 

They see an impeachment drive as hurting more than helping their efforts to win back the Senate majority and generally back Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) efforts to keep a lid on the issue.

Even Senate Democrats running for president who back impeachment aren’t pressing Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) to take a more aggressive approach to the issue.

Democratic senators say the subject of impeachment rarely even comes up in caucus-wide meetings and that it distracts from issues like health care they see as more important to voters.

“I don’t think we should go there now,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I was here for the Clinton impeachment, and after it was over I wished it never had happened. I think we ought to be very, very cautious with that kind of thing.”

“Everybody does what they do based on their own desires, but I don’t find it helpful,” she said of fellow Democrats who are pushing for the beginning of an impeachment inquiry.

Schumer, who is not shy about criticizing Trump, has stuck with Pelosi’s line that more investigation needs to be done.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-dem-calls-to-impeach-trump-echo-partisan-impeachment-of-president-andrew-johnson-in-1868

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-dem-calls-to-impeach-trump-echo-partisan-impeachment-of-president-andrew-johnson-in-1868

Impeach him! He has disobeyed Congress!

Those words rang out both this week and in 1868. While the themes then and now are the same, hopefully the outcome will be different.

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson is widely recognized as one of the most embarrassing moments in American history, in which unrestrained partisanship almost won the day. But it was also a day in which one senator, as recounted by President John F. Kennedy in his book “Profiles in Courage,” stopped us from becoming just another banana republic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., missed her “Profiles in Courage” moment Thursday, adding “villainous” to her laundry list of accusations against President Trump. Rather than stand firm against her caucus and move the country forward, she caved and started to call the assertion of executive privilege a “cover-up.”

Pelosi might oppose it and might fight it in the courts, but it’s no cover-up. It’s a clear and legally appropriate message that enough is enough.

Remember that there were already multiple all-out congressional investigations over the last two years in addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller issuing 2,800 subpoenas, interviewing 500 witnesses and ordering 280 interceptions of communications while employing 40 FBI agents and 19 lawyers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-impeachment-dilemma-11558651938

It wasn’t with a heavy heart that Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer on Tuesday endorsed initiating formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. And it was with unvoiced alarm that his fellow Virginia Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger ran from the impeachment question the same day.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a wicked impeachment dilemma, and Virginia captures it perfectly. It’s been one month since Congress got its hands on the Mueller report, and Mrs. Pelosi has spent that time scrambling to balance competing demands in her caucus. Her approach—call it pseudo-impeachment—has involved accusing the president of all things impeachable (to appease the left) while not engaging in a real impeachment process (to appease moderates). That strategy is now hitting a wall.

The progressives in her party are lining up to demand an impeachment spectacle. They hail from uber-liberal districts, their constituents want Trump’s scalp, and they fear inaction will earn them a primary challenge. Even Mrs. Pelosi’s wingmen—those who’ve had her fake-impeachment back—are starting to break. The Washington Post reports that Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is arguing for a formal impeachment inquiry, as are “five members of Pelosi’s leadership team.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.theepochtimes.com/democratic-rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tackles-cauliflower-in-green-new-deal_2932099.html

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has accused the humble cauliflower of representing “colonial” views and said she believes it should stop being planted in community gardens as part of her Green New Deal proposal to prevent what she calls “environmental catastrophe and [to] heal systemic inequality.”

“When someone says it is ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, maybe cauliflower or something, what you are doing is taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram video that has since been removed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joins-the-war-on-cauliflower/

A few weeks ago, I noted that Louisiana’s state legislature is contemplating legislation that would bar makers of cauliflower rice from labeling their product “rice,” contending that consumers will get confused. Instead, the rice growers want the product to be labeled . . . “riced cauliflower.”

But Louisiana isn’t the only spot where cauliflower is under fire. In a stream-of-consciousness discussion of composting, the Green New Deal, and community gardens, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamented cauliflower as symbol of colonialism.

“Looks like they’ve got composting going on, which is so awesome, too, because composting is really hard to do in a neighborhood like this. We just don’t have the pick ups and the ease of it that a lot of other communities have. So that’s really how you do it, right, that is such a core component of the Green New Deal, is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context. And it’s an area that I — we get the most pushback on, because people say, like, why do you need to do that? That’s too hard. But when you really think about it, when someone says that it’s too hard to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements, because they come with the colonial lens on them. And it should be no surprise that sometimes a lot of these projects don’t work out occasionally because our communities are naturally attuned to live in an environmentally conscious way.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/stacey-abrams-identity-politics-is-exactly-who-we-are-and-exactly-how-we-won/

“For those of us who still reside on planet Earth, this sort of delusional nonsense is bewildering. We can’t figure out what this loon is babbling about. She insists she won an election, despite all evidence to the contrary. ”

Here’s a rule of thumb I stumbled upon years ago, and it remains true more often than not: Liberals want conservatives to shut up, and conservatives want liberals to keep talking. There are exceptions, of course — the Trumpkin wing of the GOP would like nothing more than to silence anyone, liberal or not, who criticizes their liege — but it tends to be the case. The more libs talk, the better it is for the rest of us. And if you want to know why, just listen to the Democratic Party’s latest superheroine, Stacey Abrams.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Wednesday urged Democrats to embrace identity politics, at a time when the issue has become a source of debate within the party…
“The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the past 10 years and it’s been used as a dog whistle to say we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the voices coming into progress,” Abrams said. “I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are and exactly how we won.”

If you don’t believe her, just look at the results. She’s the rightful governor of Georgia, there’s a unicorn in every garage and free candy in every tummy, and the Democrats are doing just great.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/22/democratic-establishment-wont-stand-partys-a

Democratic leaders seem to have surmised that to keep together a party splitting both generationally and ideologically, they had to either court the radicals or risk early retirement.

Perhaps the most significant long-term development taking place in the Democratic Party is its surrender to the party’s Blame America First wing. One of many indications of this is House Democratic leadership’s ardent defense of its virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and fundamentally anti-American and anti-Western colleagues.

The Democrat establishment’s cave began when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chastised Rep. Ilhan Omar for her anti-Semitic comments, only to then cravenly acquiesce to party progressives by passing a House resolution that refused to condemn Omar by name, and refused to solely condemn Omar’s offending anti-Semitic rhetoric. It accelerated with the party’s attack on critics of Omar’s comments seemingly trivializing the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Then, in the wake of Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s feckless, supportive responses for Rep. Rashida Tlaib following the firestorm she created with her historically illiterate, Hamas-ian hagiographyof Israel’s founding, the Holocaust, and the Arabs’ role in relation to both, the cave to the Blame America Firsters appears to be complete.

The Democrat Old Guard will no longer engage in even muted criticism of its Party’s provocative Young Turks. Rather, it will wholeheartedly defend the provocateurs and vociferously condemn their condemners

The pertinent question few are asking is, “Why?” Assuming the Democratic leadership is driven above all else by power, I suggest three primary reasons for this shameful shift.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-running-for-president-crowded-field/

Twenty or so are going to end this presidential-election cycle deeply disappointed.

Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low expectations get to enjoy a form of moral victory. (Ben Carson and Rick Perry might be happy how the 2016 cycle ended, with both taking roles in Trump’s cabinet. Bernie Sanders might be, too.) But running for president and flopping is a deep disappointment, and while the occasional figure can emerge from a failed bid to move on to different victories — Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole became senators, Jerry Brown became governor again, Howard Dean became chair of the Democratic National Committee — a lot of failed presidential candidates fade away into the private sector and obscurity beyond occasional cable-news appearances: Bill Bradley, Tommy Thompson, Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt, Alan Keyes, Bob Graham, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Michele Bachmann.

The 2020 Democratic primary is going to end with about 23 campaigns falling short of actual victory and any moral victories. Perhaps two candidates will end up in a unity ticket, and perhaps one or two will have set themselves up for another run for another office someday. But the coming year will bring a lot of anticlimax, frustration, and disillusionment for a lot of once-promising figures in the party.

Here are the 24 Democratic presidential candidates, more or less in order of their position, although outside the top four or five, the ranking barely matters.