RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrat-madness-11600296765?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

How crazy does the violence have to get before it costs the Harris-Biden campaign the election? (Nomenclature update: On Monday, Kamala Harrisreferred in public to something she called the “Harris administration.” In a speech the next day, Mr. Biden himself referred to “a Harris-Biden administration.” If that’s how they want it, fine by me. From now on, it’s “the Harris-Biden campaign.”)

For weeks, analysts have been pondering whether the “law and order” issue elevated by President Trump and the Republican convention could have a material effect on voting this fall. Generally, they have minimized the issue. But like the hurricanes rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, the waves of urban violence have apparently become impossible to ignore.

A Monmouth poll out this week finds 65% of respondents say “maintaining law and order” is a big problem. The poll’s self-identified party affiliations are 28% Republican, 41% independent and 31% Democratic. Here’s the election’s ticking time-bomb: Among “non-Republican” blacks and other minorities, more than 60% agree that civil disorder has become a big issue, while just 46% of white non-Republicans see it as a problem. Looks like where one lives explains a lot about the Democratic worldview.

There’s more bad news at the wrong moment for Harris-Biden: Conclusive evidence has emerged that the American left is certifiably insane.

After the shooting this week of two cops in Compton, south of Los Angeles, a small contingent of antipolice protesters stood outside a hospital chanting, “We hope they die!” Mr. Biden tweeted criticism of both incidents as “unacceptable” and “entirely counterproductive.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/15/its-official-trump-unleashed-a-middle-class-boom-that-benefited-women-minorities-most/

Not that you’d ever know it from the media blackout, but households have seen the biggest jump in real median income in at least 52 years. The poverty rate is lower than it’s been since at least 1959, the annual Census report on income and poverty shows.

These are incredible achievements that would be leading every newspaper and TV news program if they had happened under a Democratic president. The absence press coverage is even more astounding when you consider that the gains were among lower-income families, women, blacks and Hispanics.

In other words, every constituent group that Democrats claim that they represent.

Here’s the rundown:

Median household income reaches all-time high: In 2019, median household income shot up 6.8%, the biggest annual increase since at least 1967. To understand how impressive this is, consider that the next biggest increase was 5% in 2015, which came after five years of declines. (When Barack Obama left office, median household income was essentially where it was back in 2000.) From 1967 to 2018, the average annual increase was a mere 0.6%.

Lower-income families gained the most. Despite the endless chants about how President Donald Trump’s policies benefited only the rich, the truth is that lower-income families made the biggest gains in his first three years in office.

The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10% under Trump. Those in the next fifth saw incomes rise more than 9%.

The top 5% of households saw their share of total income drop.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-a-mideast-deal-11600211909?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

How would official Washington respond if a Democratic President brokered a peace deal between Israel and two Arab states? The papers would be stacked with play-by-plays of how the historic breakthrough was achieved and adulatory profiles of the people in the room. The hosannas to the President’s strategic vision would flow from think tanks and academia, if not also from Oslo’s City Hall.

The reaction Tuesday to the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House was more muted, and maybe that’s for the best. Some groundwork for the cascading thaw in Arab-Israeli relations was laid by a decade of shifts in the Middle East’s balance of power as Israel grew stronger, the Iran threat persisted, and the U.S. signaled its intention to draw down.

Yet the Trump Administration deserves credit for taking advantage of these strategic shifts, and for setting aside the failed conventional playbook for how Arab-Israeli comity could be achieved. The Abraham Accords, named for the prophet of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, are based on mutual interest. Mr. Trump has been criticized for a transactional view of world affairs, and we sometimes worry about how that will play out, for example, in East Asia. Yet in the Middle East, hard-headed transactionalism may have been what was needed.

American negotiators have tried for years to press the Israelis and Palestinians to give up something in a leap of faith and hope that peace will follow. Each side saw that as a lose-lose proposition. But peace between Arab states and Israel offered a win-win.

1)    Trump denounced antisemitism in two State of the Union addresses.  

2)    He moved the American Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem.  In solidarity with the U.S. decision, Guatemala moved its embassy to Jerusalem and Honduras, Paraguay, Moldova, Czechia, Romania and Hungary announced that they may soon follow suit.

3)    Trump declared support for Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria.

4)    He recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a major strategic asset that protects Israel from aggression from the northeast, and signed the document with Netanyahu at his side right before Israeli elections.

5)    Trump increased U.S. military aid to Israel and offered a mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel to further the alliance between the two countries.  

6)    He defunded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a so-called relief agency for Arab-Palestinians marked by corruption that has incited against Israel and worked with Hamas, even enabling the building of terror tunnels under its buildings. 

7)    President Trump pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in protest of its bias against Israel and its extension of membership to notorious human rights abusers. 

8)    He withdrew from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) citing its anti-Israel bias after it designated Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah) as Arab-Palestinian world heritage sites. (Jews have had a 3800 year presence in Hebron, which is situated in Judea – “the land of the Jews.”)

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/14/joe-biden-promises-fewer-fires-floods-and-hurricanes-if-he-wins-in-november-n930658

On Monday, Democratic nominee Joe Biden condemned President Donald Trump as a “climate arsonist,” predicting that if the president wins reelection in November, America will witness more “hellish” events like fires in the West, flooding in the Midwest, and hurricanes on the East Coast. He effectively promised that if he wins, America will suffer from fewer fires, fewer floods, and fewer hurricanes.

Although Biden excoriated Trump for “ignoring the facts” and “denying reality,” he focused his remarks on the wildfires ravaging California, Oregon, and Washington State — fires exacerbated by bad forest management more than any sort of climate change.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is under water?” Biden asked.

“Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly,” the Democrat insisted.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bloombergs-florida-purchase-11600126292?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
Well the gnomish Bloomberg did buy himself a third term as mayor of New York City….rsk

If Joe Biden carries Florida in November, he ought to make Mike Bloomberg Secretary of the Treasury. The billionaire certainly will have earned it, with an 11th-hour cash infusion of $100 million to help Mr. Biden in the state.

Florida is a must-win for President Trump, and Mr. Bloomberg’s infusion comes amid the Cook Political Report moving the race from “leans Democratic” to “toss up” and polls showing Mr. Biden underperforming among Hispanic voters. Florida is a big state with multiple and expensive media markets. Mr. Bloomberg’s money will go via his Super PAC Independence USA and other Democratic groups toward television and digital advertising in English and Spanish.

It’s all perfectly legal so long as Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t coordinate with the Biden campaign. By announcing the $100 million campaign publicly, Mr. Bloomberg is letting the Biden campaign know it can take millions it might have otherwise spent in Florida and redirect them to other battleground states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-of-the-climate-apocalypse-11600126352?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Sometimes we wonder if Joe Biden writes anything in his public remarks other than the words “here’s the deal.” An example is the Democratic nominee’s big speech Monday on the West Coast wildfires in which he never mentioned the need for better forest management.

The younger Joe Biden would never have allowed that kind of political malpractice. But his handlers let him deliver a lengthy speech that blamed the fires, Hurricanes Laura and Sally, flooding on the coasts, a windstorm in the Midwest, and the hot summer, among other events, on “the fury of climate change everywhere—all this year and right now.” It’s as if he saw the apocalyptic climate-change melodrama of some years back, “The Day After Tomorrow,” and decided to become Dennis Quaid.

If that seems glib, how else to describe a speech that claims to revere science but is utterly detached from it? On the wildfires, Mr. Biden’s failure to mention the need to clear dry and diseased fallen trees defies what has gradually been recognized as a necessity even on the environmental left.

Decades ago the forestry consensus changed from active management to letting nature take its course. Controlled burns that once cleared rotting underbrush stopped. Logging that thinned forests declined amid green political opposition. One unintended result, especially in dry summers or extended drought, were millions of acres of brush that become fuel for raging fires. Add the spread of housing into more distant suburbs, and the risks to people and property have grown.