RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/cultural_amnesia_and_american_survival.html

Clive James’s 2007 book titled Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is a collection of artists and thinkers.  They are largely concerned with responses to “threats against freedom, mostly in the 20th century.”

As I leaf through it, I am astonished at the echoes of my own qualms as this country stands on the precipice of either remaining free or not.  I see Democrats and leftists invoking Nazism to describe conservatives in America, and I am reminded of Jean-François Revel’s words that “one insults the memory of the victims of Nazism if one uses them to bury the memory of the victims of communism.”  As leftists carelessly invoke Nazis to label “deplorables,” they totally disregard the evil of communism. 

Instead, the left and Democrats work assiduously to transform America into a socialist/communist country notwithstanding the millions who perished in communist countries and who continue to suffer even today.  It is vital to recall that in only ten years, Venezuela was irrevocably destroyed by socialism.  Yet Venezuela was once richer than China and Japan, and its currency was second only to the United States.  Moreover, Venezuela had an excellent health system.  No longer!

Moreover, Khmer Rouge (1975–1979) torturers had Western apologists in their corner who patently ignored the hideous torture, and as a result, “of 17,000 people who were interrogated in the S-21 camp in Phnom Penh, 16,994 died in agony.”  

While we are thankfully not at the level of the aforementioned groups, each time a picture of the Portland destruction and the people who gleefully beat and murder innocent people is shown, one is hard pressed not to see Brown Shirts operating with total license in Oregon.

Terry Gilliam, film director, is one of the artists featured in Cultural Amnesia.  His film Brazil is considered “one of the greatest political films,” wherein the “torture surgery contributes one of the most brain-curdling of the film’s many disturbing themes.”  He writes about “how the author of a state that rules by terror can detach himself from the brute facts.”  Whether it was Juan Perón or Hitler or the Soviet system or the Japanese army of the 20th century, the “organs” of power “were always, at the brute force level, staffed by otherwise unemployable dimwits.” 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/is_a_vote_for_joe_biden_in_the_interest_of_american_jews.html

A recent study conducted by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 67% of American Jewish respondents planned to vote for Joe Biden and 30% for President Trump.  Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed claimed to be pro-Israel and 64% said Israel is an important election issue.  Most ranked Biden higher on U.S.-Israel relations, the handling of anti-Semitism, and ensuring the security of the Jewish community.  The survey results are surprising, given Trump’s stellar record on Jews and Israel.  American Jews must reconsider, for Biden’s record and positions on critical topics belie these perceptions.

Record on Israel

Biden’s record should dispel any notions he is staunchly pro-Israel.  In 1982, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations committee as a Democratic senator from Delaware, he argued with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  He threatened to cut aid to Israel if settlement expansion continued in Judea and Samaria, shouting and banging the table when Begin wouldn’t budge.

In 2010, Biden upbraided Israel for building apartments in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem and opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to extend sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. 

In 2016, he pressured Ukraine, an abstainer, to vote for U.N. Security Council measure 2334, which identified the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall as located in “illegally occupied Palestinian territories,” an affirmation that defies historical fact.  UNSC 2334 also condemned Israel building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Approval of the resolution emboldened the Palestinian Authority to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and the Jewish Quarter, reversing decades of U.S. vetoes against such moves.  That year, the U.N. General assembly passed 20 resolutions against Israel.  There were only six against other countries.

Biden’s anti-Israel stance is further confirmed by how the Obama administration interfered in the 2015 Israeli elections and tried to get Netanyahu defeated.  Obama and Biden tried to rupture Netanyahu’s governing coalition and move it to the left.  That year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the State Department had granted $350,000 to OneVoice, a radical anti-Israel organization that supports Hamas and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  The funds were issued for a political campaign known as V15 or Victory 2015, a political campaign that used voter contacts and State Department-funded activists to defeat the incumbent government.  The Obama-Biden administration also published never-before-released details of Israel’s nuclear program, heedless of its profound impact on Israel’s security and the balance of power in the region.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/someone-elses-life-is-passing-before-bidens-eyes/

A story the Dem nominee offered at his recent townhall is almost certainly hogwash.

Sometimes when Joe Biden offers yarns about his childhood, I think of a Woody Allen bit from his stand-up days in which the comic tells the story of being invited to a Halloween party while visiting the Deep South in the early 1960s. Allen decides to dress-up as a ghost, and throws on a white sheet and sets off. Soon, a bunch of men also in white sheets drive up and order him to get in a car. A naïve Allen, assuming the group of people are also going to the party as ghosts, obliges.

Allen, of course, ends up at a Klan rally, where he gives himself away by “pledging” 50 dollars for the cause in the manner Jews donate at Temple during Rosh Hashana and other holidays. Facing the noose, Allen says:

And suddenly my whole life passed before my eyes. I saw myself as a kid again, in Kansas, going to school, swimming at the swimming hole, and fishing, frying up a mess-o-catfish, going down to the general store, getting a piece of gingham for Emmy-Lou. And I realize it’s not my life. They’re gonna hang me in two minutes, the wrong life is passing before my eyes.

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/16/vernon-jones-antifa-are-burning-black-businesses-and-nobody-holds-joe-biden-accountable-n1064598

On Friday, three prominent black supporters of President Donald Trump condemned Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s record on the black community in a press call. Trump campaign Senior Advisor Katrina Pierson, Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones (D), and former NFL player Herschel Walker each claimed that Donald Trump “has done more for us in 47 months than Joe Biden has done in 47 years in public service.”

Toward the end of the call, Jones condemned Biden for refusing to condemn antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters and slammed the media for not asking Biden about them.

“Antifa are burning black businesses… and nobody holds Joe Biden accountable for that,” Jones declared. He lamented that “more black lives have been killed as the result of these riots and looting and shooting” than from police shootings of unarmed black men “but no one asks him about that.”

Instead, “the liberal media was calling it ‘peaceful protest.’” Jones called this a “black eye on journalism.”

Indeed, the destructive George Floyd riots have disproportionately damaged black communities in Kenosha, Wisc., Minneapolis, and Chicago. The riots destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 26 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/2020_the_cancel_america_election.html

THE KLINGENSTEIN VIDEO: https://f.io/C6ITyQwd

I’m a pretty quiet guy. I love politics, I’ve volunteered for and worked on campaigns, and I’m not shy about being either Christian or conservative — but I’m also not bombastic, egotistical, or easily offended. Donald Trump embodies each of these three characteristics, putting his personality on the opposite side of the spectrum from mine. I worked hard against him in the 2016 primaries, and couldn’t pull the lever in the general that year, leaving it blank and voting down-ticket.

But in two weeks, I’m going to pull the lever to help President Donald Trump win re-election. The alternative is a radicalized Democratic Party that uses Joe Biden as a puppet, believes America is racist, and wants to destroy our individual rights — with social media and mainstream media as willing accomplices, and an enfeebled Republican Party as the emasculated opposition.

I was already going to vote for Trump, but a recent speech by Tom Klingenstein has given more juice to the choice. I’d never heard of Klingenstein — he’s a businessman and Chairman of the Claremont Institute, but there isn’t a lot online about him. But his speech about why Trump is the man for our moment has 700,000 views after being posted by American Greatness and being endorsed by Rush Limbaugh. Real Clear Politics published the transcript, and Twitter is abuzz with Klingenstein’s message.

Klingenstein’s message in both the viral speech and a more recent one is clear, concise, and heartfelt: that Trump might not get his vote in another time. But for 2020, the choice is stark: BLM riots have been endorsed by Democrats while most Republicans are muted or even silent in response. Churches have acquiesced to bans on attendance while bars, liquor stores, and BLM protests are open for business. And the child abuse called “transgenderism” is gaining steam, with Biden calling it the “civil rights issue of our time.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-tax-whopper-11602888777?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Joe Biden got a pass from the media for the myriad whoppers he told about his policies in Thursday night’s town hall. But one that we can’t let slide was his claim that he only intends to make people earning more than $400,000 “pay what they did in the Bush Administration—39.6%.”

Where to begin? The Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 cut the top individual tax rate to 35% from 39.6%. A 2012 deal between the Obama Administration and House Republicans extended the Bush tax cuts for the middle class while returning the top rate to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, plus the 0.9% Medicare surtax imposed by ObamaCare.

Republicans in 2017 lowered the top rate to 37%, and Mr. Biden says he would merely return the rate to where it was before the GOP tax cuts. But that’s before add-ons. He would also restore the Pease deduction limitation for high earners, which tacks on the equivalent of 1.2%.

He also wants to extend the Social Security 12.4% payroll tax to income over $400,000. The current cap is $137,700. Half of the payroll tax is paid by the employer, but economists know it’s still a tax on labor income, which means workers. The top marginal rate would rise to 57% including 3.8% in Medicare taxes, and that’s before state taxes that run as high as 13.3% in California.