RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/obama_shatters_previous_record_mentions_himself_467_times_in_one_speech_in_berlin.html

The post-presidential era of his life seems to be a bit of a challenge to the ego of Barack Hussein Obama. Never shy about referring to himself while president, now that that man in the White House is reversing his policies and spectacularly succeeding it’s got to be hard on his self-esteem. And let’s not forget the psychological pressure that may be building in the wake of the collapse of the Russia Hoax and the possible investigation of its origins.

So, what’s a comparatively young (age 57) man with decades of life ahead to do to compensate? Self-reflection and personal growth are out of the question, of course (this is Barack Obama, after all, the man who claimed to better at everything than his aides charged with speech-writing, economic policy and much more), so it appears that defensive ego boosting is his chosen course.

As it happens, the venue for his speech was Berlin, where in 2008 he addressed the largest crowd of his career. I don’t know the size of his audience yesterday in Berlin, but it had to be a tiny fraction of the 100,000+ he faced back when things were going his way.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/06/one-truthful-democrat-emerges-to-call-out-partys-delusions/

Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and governor, was always one of my favorite politicians in part because his politics weren’t perfectly polished. Among other free-wheeling moments, he called fellow Democrat Bill Clinton an “uncommonly good liar” and said a requirement for becoming president is that you must “want it more than life itself.”

Kerrey moved on to academia and now to an investment bank, but hasn’t lost the willingness to break ranks with his party. The habit surfaces in a withering criticism of current Democrats, where he says they are suffering from two major “delusions.”

“The first,” he writes in an op-ed in the Omaha World-Herald, “is that Americans long for a president who will ask us to pay more for the pleasure of increasing the role of the federal government in our lives.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/gillibrand-booker-buttigieg-defend-ms-13/

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Donald Trump. There are plenty of honest, good-faith arguments against his policies. But that’s not good enough for our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters on the left. They hate him so much that they need to just make $#!+ up.

The following video from May 2018 is now making the rounds again:

.@realDonaldTrump on people asking for asylum “These aren’t people. These are animals.” pic.twitter.com/pTKY08Obm2

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) April 5, 2019

Trump was talking about MS-13. The gang whose motto is “Kill, rape, control.” He was calling them animals. Having since educated myself on MS-13’s horrendous, repulsive crimes, I agree with him. If anything, the comparison is an insult to actual animals.

We went through this whole thing last year. The left thoroughly embarrassed themselves by claiming he was referring to all immigrants, not just the criminals who murder and rape.

But it’s been an entire 11 months, so why not tell the same lie all over again?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/democratic-presidential-candidates-unimpressive/

The 2020 field continues to un-impress.

Time to check on the 20 Smurfs.

Joe Biden recorded a message on a friend’s iPhone in which he admitted that he’s made women and “some men” uncomfortable by, among other things, touching them, rubbing their shoulders, and smelling their hair. It’s his way of making a “connection,” Biden explained, as though he were a domestic animal introducing himself to another pet. Men, women, “young, old,” he’s touched them all. Handshakes and small talk aren’t enough for Joe. He’s “tactile.”

Biden pledged to be “mindful” of personal space because “social norms” have changed since he was born in the late Cretaceous period. He still hasn’t announced his presidential run, but has signaled to allies that his prospective candidacy is “full steam” ahead — in which direction, and toward what destination, no one can say. It already resembles one of those Amtrak trains Biden admires so much: rickety, noisy, a relic transiting badlands.

Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, has maintained a studied silence throughout the controversy over his vice president’s creepiness. So has Michelle. The Obama team appears to be more intrigued by Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who launched his campaign at a rally in El Paso, Texas, last weekend. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon wrote about it here. The AP had to correct its story on the speech, which said, “Mr. O’Rourke also spoke at length in his native Spanish.” Dios mio.

Beto is as lily-white as Elizabeth Warren, whose finance director is leaving because of a disagreement over money. The director would like to raise some. Warren’s not so sure. She pledged not to accept donations from millionaires and billionaires, holding out for small-dollar contributions from folks like you and me. The problem: Folks like you and me don’t want anything to do with Warren.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/beto-orourke-trumps-rhetoric-echoes-the-third-reich/

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke compared President Trump’s rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany Thursday, citing in particular Trump’s controversial comments about illegal immigrants.

At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa, the former representative from the border town of El Paso, Texas was harshly critical of “the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals, but as animals and an infestation.”

“Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich,” O’Rourke remarked to a crowd of students at Morningside College. “I would not expect it in the United States of America.”

Later Thursday, O’Rourke doubled down on his comments, telling reporters, “I compared the rhetoric that the president has employed to rhetoric that you might have heard during the Third Reich.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273361/mayor-buttigieg-runs-president-while-his-city-daniel-greenfield
On March 31, a South Bend grandma brought her grandson to the hospital. The 11-month-old baby boy had been shot. His grandmother’s car had also taken fire. It was another early morning in South Bend.

Around the same time, Mayor Buttigieg, was toting up the $7 million in donations from his charm offensive as his bid for the 2020 Democrat nomination got underway. The national media never bothered reporting the shooting of an 11-year-old boy in the city he was supposed to be running, but instead confined its coverage of South Bend matters to a publicity stunt wedding officiated by Buttigieg.

The horrifying shooting of an 11-month-old boy on the millennial mayor’s watch was not an unusual incident. In the last few days, even the media was gushing over Buttigieg’s presidential ambitions, two Indiana University South Bend players were injured in a shooting on Notre Dame Avenue, a blind date ended in a shooting, and yet another shooting added to the bloody toll in the real South Bend.

Those are quite a few shootings for a city of barely 100,000 people. But South Bend is a violent place.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/beto-orourke-is-fauxbama/

Obama’s platitudes are still platitudes in the mouth of the less-talented O’Rourke.

Only once did I sit in a medium-sized room with Barack Obama. It was May 19, 2006, and the then-senator was speaking at a BookExpo America breakfast to promote his book The Audacity of Hope. He warmed up by noting that some people were cynical about politics. “At best we just hope it does us no harm,” he said, which was true enough. But then he kept going.

There has always been this other idea, and the idea can be described very simply. The notion that we all have a stake in each other, and that my success is directly tied to the success of my neighbors…for all of our much-vaunted individualism, there is also this sense that we are tied up in a mutual destiny, and every once in a while that sense, that interpretation, expresses itself not only in our families, in our churches…but it also expresses itself in our government, in our collective lives. And it’s that sense that propelled me in politics.

Winding down, he deployed Martin Luther King Jr.’s remark about how “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” and said, “I look forward to working with you guys to spread the hope.”

The place went bananas. In a room full of booksellers and librarians, I was the only one not applauding. I was the only one who didn’t leap to my feet as though I had just received a life-altering revelation. As my success is obviously not tied to that of my neighbors, I am obviously not caught up in a mystical mutual-destiny tour with 300 million Americans and never have felt any rhapsodic “collective life” created by the nurturing bonds of government, Obama’s speech struck me as completely false, not to mention vapid, platitudinous and void of all meaningful content. (Tell me, at what capital-gains tax rate does the epiphany of “collective life” kick in?)

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/stacey-abrams-identity-politics-are-the-politics-that-win/

Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams praised the “identity politics” of the progressive left as both electorally effective and morally right during a speech at Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention in New York on Wednesday.

“Identity politics is nothing more complex than saying, ‘I see you,’” Abrams said. “I lean in to identity politics. I believe in identity politics. And I believe identity politics are the politics that win.”

Abrams went on to fan the speculation surrounding her possible entry into the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, telling the audience that she has not yet made a decision.

“No, I don’t know what I’m doing next yet” she said when asked about a possible presidential run.

The comments come after Abrams shot down the suggestion that she might enter the race as Joe Biden’s running mate early in the primary in order to bolster his credibility among racial minorities and younger progressives.

“I think you don’t run for second place,” she said during an appearance on ABC’s The View last week. “If I’m going to enter a primary, then I’m going to enter a primary. And if I don’t enter a primary, my job is to make certain that the best Democrat becomes the nominee and whoever wins the primary that we make sure that person gets elected in 2020.”

http://www.rollcall.com/news/the-green-new-deal-you-cannot-be-serious

In the awkward aftermath of the Green New Deal’s rollout, perhaps the most appropriate question for its supporters, especially the Democratic presidential field, is one often posed by tennis bad boy John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!”

But, apparently, when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey introduced their proposal in February, they were deadly serious, and breathless progressives couldn’t wait to hop aboard the climate change express. First in line, the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate who were eager to offer up their enthusiastic support.

There was just one snag. The Green New Deal, in reality, wasn’t serious. These weren’t well-thought-out ideas or vetted policies. They were far left talking points that couldn’t possibly survive any real scrutiny. And they didn’t.

The blowback was epic. Critics pounced on the resolution’s absurd provisions. America would have to retool every structure in the country to maximize energy efficiency. No cars. No planes. Trains to everywhere. Well, except from L.A. to San Francisco, where fiscal reality has already ended that green dream.