RUTHFULLY YOURS

On February 15,2016 National Review had a “Never Trump” issue
Conservatives against Trump By NR Staff February 15, 2016 5:00 AM https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/02/15/conservatives-against-trump/

Have they reverted to that form?  Here is a sample of today’s online edition.

Trump’s Ugly Exit By Rich Lowry

Americans Deserve the Truth, Even If It’s Unpleasant   Jim Geraghty Declares that the Trump campaign is a “big con.”

‘The Dumbest Coup’ Kevin D. Williamson

Trump’s Disgraceful Gambit The Editors

The Insanity Oath Michael Brendan Dougherty

The Trump Elector Strategy That Dare Not Speak Its Name Dan McLaughlin.

How We Know Dominion Voting Machines Didn’t Affect the Election Outcome By John McCormack

How would you like to be on a ship that fake news announces is taking on water portside? For us landlubbers that’s left in boat talk.

You know what they say about Muridae –(rats and mice).

 In the rush to the lifeboats  Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah),  Susan Collins (Maine), Ben Sasse (Neb.),Representatives Fred Upton (Mich.), Francis Rooney (Fla.), Will Hurd (Texas), Paul Mitchell (Mich.),  Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and less vocal and more cautious but urging the President toward concession, Senators Marco Rubio ‘(Fla.),Pat Toomey (Pa.),Mike Rounds (S.D.), Representative Tom Reed (N.Y.). would grab life jackets scramble to the gangplank abandoning the captain whose efforts to reassure them were denied and decried.

Big Tech, social media, and the Wall Street “jewelry” (see German translation) would disembark to yachts and sailboats and helicopters equipped with emergency support caviar and champagne dispatched from posh harbors.

As soon as those dead-weight rodentia would leave, the ship would immediately right itself and like the famous Presidential yacht of yore the U.S.S. Sequoia, would navigate to the Wharf in the District of Columbia and then to the White House.

The next day media headlines would shriek that those Republicans were mercilessly thrown overboard…..Rsk

I received a rather officious note from a very nice e-pal:
“Stop it! You are whistling past the graveyard! Continuing to defend Trump is ridiculous and frankly gratuitous.”
If President Trump is wrong and cannot find enough evidence of fraud the worst that can happen is delay in Chancellor Biden’s relocation to the White House.
On the other hand, serious instances of chicanery keep mounting, and if President Trump proves his allegations, our most sacred right in America will have been mugged by criminals attempting a coup.
Stay tuned! rsk

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

In the Senate election of November 2014, Ben Sasse, a conservative Republican endorsed by the Tea Party, won the race propelled by the same popular sentiments that brought Donald Trump to the White House two years later.  Nebraska is a Republican stronghold with Senator Deb Fisher and three GOP congressmen. Sasse is now running for re-election.

He has been critical of the President on several occasions but voted with him on most public policies such as tax cuts, the border wall, the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and acquittal of all impeachment charges, and he has issued a full-throated endorsement of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

He has not criticized President Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, nor has he lobbied for masks and social distancing. On his website he is in agreement with the assessments of the President quoting the CDC:

“Who is at risk?

The current risk assessment from the Centers for Disease Control states: The immediate risk for individuals of being exposed to COVID-19 is thought to be low.”

In fact, on September 10, 2019 when he was gearing up for re-election the President tweeted his support:

“Senator Ben Sasse has done a wonderful job representing the people of Nebraska. He is great with our Vets, the Military, and your very important Second Amendment. Strong on Crime and the Border, Ben has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

That endorsement quelled his criticisms until he won a primary and was assured victory on November 3.

What then could explain his screed bruited by the New York Times in the headline:

“Slamming Trump, G.O.P. Senator Warns of a ‘Republican Blood Bath’

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a scathing takedown of President Trump during a telephone town hall with constituents, saying he cozied up to dictators and white supremacists.”

For nine minutes he castigated the President for mishandling the pandemic and treating it as a PR opportunity; “kissing dictators’ butts” while ignoring human rights abuses; mocking evangelicals behind closed doors; flirting with white supremacists: and mistreating women.

The most ironic accusation, in light of the revelations of Hunter Biden’s chicanery, is “His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity.”

To be fair, Sasse has advocated a more muscular approach to the Chinese and a stronger defense of Hong Kong. But there are arguments on both sides of the issue.

Most of the “conservative” #NeverTrumpers throw narrative spitballs while Sasses lobbed a grenade and added:  “What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?”

Has he been spooked by polls? Does he seriously prefer Biden?

In his words contemplating a Democrat victory he evokes a “Venezuela style” Supreme Court with dozens of justices installed by ascendant Democrats.

A cynic could wonder who is pushing his buttons, or even more cynically and vulgar whose butt is he kissing?

TONIGHT AND TOMORROW ARE YOM KIPPUR AND THERE WILL BE NO POSTING UNTIL TUESDAY MORNING.

Tonight, at sundown Yom Kippur the holiest day known as the Day of Atonement begins for the Jewish people.  It is a somber Holiday which I observe with memories, reflection, regrets and appreciation for the good things in life.

Regrets? My deepest regret is the state of liberal Jews today. In kindness- it is after all a day of repentance for harsh treatment of others- I could say that they are Utopians who really want a better world.

When does Utopia collide with reality and facts? When does exculpating riots, looting and violence against innocent people meld with social justice? How long will they tolerate an assault on American  legacy and culture?

How do people who toast “L’chaim”- to life -become so obsessed with abortion including late term abortion that it becomes a key consideration in elections?

Why have so many people of my faith attached their passionate support to a party which ignores and condones vile anti-Semitism?

Why do they revile Benjamin Netanyahu but demand a hearing for criminals, bigots and abettors of terror?

Will they atone? Maybe for polluting and their “inner racism” of self-preservation. Alas.

On an optimistic note, we have survived as a faith and people for 5781 years while mighty nations and empires have crumbled. May we continue to do so and in the New Year may the Lord guard the safety and success of America and Israel.  rsk

On 9/11, 2001 my husband and I were in Brussels, Belgium.  As the horrific events unfolded, our  ship made its way to Dover, England where we waited anxiously for a flight to New York which was scheduled for September 17th, 2001.

Two hours into our flight the pilot announced that a credible threat to our craft had been discovered and we would reroute to Canada at maximum speed.  After a harrowing couple of hours, we landed on a grass field in Goose Bay, Labrador a Canadian Air-Force base with no access by car and ultra-tight security. We were permitted to take only essential medications, and rushed to waiting buses.

On the way to the base, the pilot explained that the bomb threat was serious and under investigation and urged us to cooperate fully with officials.

At the base, after we were thoroughly searched and endlessly interrogated , we were ushered to a large room where we  made closely monitored short calls to reassure families, followed by snacks, cocktails, soft drinks, dinner and CNN broadcasts. Our overnight accommodations were spare but comfortable soldiers’ bunks underground.

At breakfast on September 18, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the pilot assured us that our plane had been thoroughly searched by a special anti-terror team from Ottawa, and was safe for departure. It was a tense flight.

At J.F.K. airport a stone faced and sullen immigration officer asked endless questions and stared at our faces and passports repeatedly. Suddenly, he stamped our passports, smiled broadly and said:

“Welcome home to the United States and have a very happy New Year.”

We made it home in time for a festive and memorable celebration of the holiday with our entire family.

Whatever your faith I wish you and all people of good will a happy, healthy and sweet New Year. God bless America now and forever!

שנה טובה

 Please stop abetting the left by declaring that Trump was not your first choice or that you are troubled by his character or that the tweets are annoying you and all the reluctance and virtue signaling. The hour is late.

Only a resounding victory for the re-election of Donald Trump can derail the Democrat determination to create post election challenges and chaos. If he loses abandon all hope. rsk

Eddie Alexander was an admired and respected and treasured friend. I was always dazzled by his erudition and brilliance and grateful for his unparalleled literary litigation in support of Israel’s historic rights, and against the nation’s hypocritical and venal opponents.  rsk

From Rael Jean Isaac:

“With the passing of Edward Alexander, my husband and I have lost one of our oldest and dearest friends, and the Jewish people have lost an irreplaceable champion.  Forty years ago, Alexander, then a professor of English at the University of Washington specializing in  Victorian literature, shifted his focus to the  Jews.  From then on he used his  erudition and extraordinary literary and polemical talents in service of  the Jewish people and the Jewish state.  He skewered the villains, both without and within the Jewish fold, from political and academic icons like Bishop Tutu and Edward Said to “Jewish” enemies like Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler and Seymour Hersh.  Some of his most devastating critiques were of those Jews who claimed to be “friends of Israel” while undermining her.  Indeed one of his books is entitled “With Friends Like These.” Alexander saw himself on a battlefield as the titles of his books reveal: The Jewish Wars; The Holocaust and the War of Ideas; The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Accusers and Defenders; The Jewish Idea and its Enemies. Nor was he hesitant to take on the enemies of Israel within the Jewish state itself, an intelligentsia  riddled with moral arrogance and self-hatred.  As Alvin Rosenfeld has said, Edward Alexander turned polemical writing into an “effective art form.”

Three years ago, Edward was devastated by the loss of Leah, his wife of  sixty years, and spent much time pouring over her letters and other writing, much of which he had never seen and which brought her closer. Rael Isaac

From  Stephen Rittenberg, M.D.

I met Eddie in the first semester at Columbia College in 1953. I brought with me arrogant biases from my private school, Fieldston and assumed no one from public school could possibly have had the education I possessed. It was a form of liberal arrogance imbibed as part of ethical culture’s training. And then I met Eddie. We hit it off immediately by talking about baseball, the Yankees (my team) and the Dodgers (his). Eddie  was knowledgeable about writers I had barely heard of, and he knew opera and aspects of culture I knew nothing about. He was clearly brilliant. I learned that he had been sports editor of the Tilden high school newspaper and had uncovered a scandal involving Brooklyn high schools stealing players from other districts that made it to the local papers. In recent years we reminisced about the great Brooklyn boys of summer. Eddie and I hit it off and sat together in various classes with Lionel Trilling, Fred Dupee and Mark Van Doren.  We developed a late adolescent friendship that lasted all our lives. When we went off to graduate school we wrote letters almost every day and I learned of Eddie’s beautiful romance with Leah.  More than friendship, and despite the continent that separated us we loved each other. I think ultimately Eddie not only lived up to the Trilling ego ideal, but surpassed it because, unlike Trilling, he drew strength from his Jewish identity. How we will miss his magnificent voice.