RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/stop-calling-her-aoc/
The new Democratic congresswoman does not deserve the stature that the acronym conveys.
As Michael Connelly’s bristly no-nonsense detective Harry Bosch says in The Black Echo, fed up to the gills with the infinite cascade of public acronyms for every conceivable police file, unit, task force, and department, acronyms give a sense of “eliteness,” of special authority, to the routine and humdrum business of professional practice and institutional procedure.

Obviously, ciphers, abbreviations, and alphabetical contractions facilitate ordinary communication. They operate as a form of shorthand to convey messages without bogging down in wordy prolongations that may lose the thread of an argument or send our interlocutors to sleep. As such, they perform a necessary function. Thus we are comfortable using alphabetical elisions for institutions, offices, programs and titles like FBI, CIA, DoJ, NATO, the UN, KFC, SNL, NYT, WSJ, NBC, CEO, and so on, or phrasal compressions like ASAP, AWOL, aka, TLC, LOL, WTF, IMO, ad infinitum.

The same applies to individuals, especially to names of famous people—e.g., MLK—or of presidents who may, or may not, have earned the sobriquet, for example: FDR, JFK, LBJ or GWB (the latter tinseled by the nickname “Dubya). This makes sense since they are referred to in political discourse with relative frequency.

An article in Slate for June 11, 2012, ruminates on the growing ubiquity of “the three-initial formulation,” which it sees as generic forms of compression trimmed for newspaper convenience. But as the article also suggests, there is more to it. Lyndon Baines Johnson understood the power of the triple initial; as Robert Caro reports in The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Johnson said, “What I want is for them to start thinking of me in terms of initials.” This is understandable. Three initials are a reputation enhancer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-may-blow-it-in-2020-11552848202

In their fever to dispense with President Trump immediately, Democrats are losing sight of what Marxists called the “objective conditions” in the country and the fundamentals of presidential politics. Unless they take care, they will forfeit their chance to regain the White House in 2020 and could return congressional control to Republicans as well.

Begin with the objective conditions. The first is continuing public disenchantment with political, media, financial and cultural establishments. It is this disenchantment that brought Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place and, additionally, almost brought Sen. Bernie Sanders, not even a Democrat, the Democratic presidential nomination.

In Mr. Trump’s case, voters knew he was boorish, narcissistic, a business and financial freewheeler, a womanizer, and largely ignorant of governance and public policy. His election was wholly about disillusion with the alternatives. His former personal lawyer was no doubt right in asserting that Mr. Trump never expected to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate but ran simply to burnish his brand. Similar populist disenchantment, by the way, is plaguing establishment politicians in the U.K., France, Germany and elsewhere.

The other objective conditions—the two most important in a national general election—are those relating to national security and the economy. Ordinary voters see that Mr. Trump has destroyed the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East, has plans for phased withdrawals of American forces from Syria and Afghanistan, has challenged Russia and Iran, and is making an effort to denuclearize North Korea. They also see him attempting to confront China for its dishonest trading practices.

They may not support his Mexican wall as first proposed, but they recognize the need for border security. They also support American citizenship for immigrants who proceed lawfully. They puzzle that Democrats, rather than focusing on means to legalization, instead are attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol as child torturers. They do not see or comprehend the damage Mr. Trump has done to multilateralism, alliances, carefully built international institutions, or thoughtful internal policy-making processes. They see only the externals.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/16/the-left-abandons-

Just after midnight, on June 5, 1968, Jerusalem born-Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan murdered U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy had won the California Democratic Party presidential primary earlier that evening.

Like his brother, President John F. Kennedy, RFK repeatedly had expressed admiration and sympathy for the small Jewish state struggling against an Arab economic boycott, war, and terrorism, including in a recent prominent synagogue address.

Repeating “Kennedy Must Die,” Sirhan purposefully committed the first modern act of Arab terrorism on U.S. soil on the first anniversary of Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six Day War of 1967, when a sovereign Israel liberated Jerusalem for the first time in 2,000 years.

Remarkably, 50 years later, six of the seven U.S. Senators who are declared candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination recently voted against the anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions bill in the Senate, and remain mute about a rapidly rising tide of anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Israel views among progressives and radicals in their party.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/16/jimmy-fallons-beto-orourke-is-an-overzealous-lightweight/

“Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon did his job well on Thursday, rolling out an impression of Beto O’Rourke that accurately captured his manic flailings and limited credentials.The sketch was a direct parody of O’Rourke’s announcement video, although Fallon’s surprisingly keen mockery of his subject’s wild and incessant gesticulations barely amounts to an exaggeration. They really were that ridiculous.

At times, the impression felt soft (“I’m like if your friend’s hot dad had the energy of a golden retriever”), but Fallon brought it home with jabs about whippets in 7-11 parking lots, virtue-signaling Instagram polls, and a biting final line: “Are there more experienced candidates out there with clearer policy ideas? Sure,” his Beto concedes with a clueless smile.The effect is an early depiction of O’Rourke as a lightweight, and a completely overzealous one at that.

If Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is the new brand of the Democrat Party, let’s unwrap the claims she uses in order to attract a new audience.  Many years ago Jeffrey Schrank wrote “The Language of Advertising Claims” and it is fascinating to apply these claims to this new face of the Democrats. Schrank asserts that many people are “notorious believers in their immunity to advertising” because they believe that “advertising is childish, dumb, a bunch of lies, and influences only the vast hordes of the less sophisticated.” 

He then goes on to elucidate different persuasive ways that advertisers use to lure in the consumer.

If these claims can be applied to Ocasio and her ilk, perhaps the American voter, particularly the millennial, will be able to see through the bilge that Ocasio regurgitates.

One of the most widely used advertising methods is the use of “invisible” or “weasel” words.  A weasel word “is aptly named after the egg eating habits of weasels.”  A weasel will suck out the inside of an egg and then turn the egg over so when the mother bird returns to the nest and continues to sit on her egg, she does not realize that there is nothing growing anymore.  Thus, “weasel” words or claims appear at first to be substantial but “disintegrate into hollow meaninglessness” upon analysis. 

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/14/beto-orourke-ultimate-limousine-liberal-gen-xer-announces-prez/

Late last night, failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke confirmed to El Paso’s KTSM that he’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. This morning, he added a video to the mix, and Twitter exploded with furry jokes and fanfare (the way politics should be?).

This is all on the coattails of an obnoxiously fawning Vanity Fair profile that basically portrayed O’Rourke as the dream Gen Xer, heaping praise on his “floor-to-ceiling bookshelf [that] contains a section for rock memoirs (Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, a favorite) and a stack of LPs (the Clash, Nina Simone)” before showing off his intellectual side: a “sizable collection of presidential biographies, including Robert Caro’s work on Lyndon B. Johnson.”

If the Dylan-LBJ mix wasn’t enough for you, Vanity Fair also waxed poetic about O’Rourke’s age: “Whereas Obama is from the tail end of the baby boom, Beto O’Rourke is quintessentially Generation X, weaned on Star Wars and punk rock and priding himself on authenticity over showmanship and a healthy skepticism of the mainstream.”

In other words, 2020 contender Beto is getting a heavy lift from the media. Expect this to continue throughout the election, unfortunately. Of course, perhaps his candor and coolness is a double-edged sword — a selling point that makes profiles of him oh-so-colorful that media ilk just can’t resist churning them out, and a cringey furtherance of limousine liberal stereotypes that make him far too mockable on Twitter.

https://spectator.us/joe-biden-three-plusses-three-minuses/

Joe Biden seems on the verge of announcing he will run for president. He begins in a strong position, leading his primary opponent in the polls. His numbers, which are just shy of 30 percent, reflect his high name-ID and years as a party stalwart. When he does jump in, the first question is whether his lead will grow or shrink as competitors begin attacking his record and garner name recognition of their own.

Biden must smack his head every time he thinks about 2016. He would have been a stronger candidate than Hillary — not a very high bar — which means he might well have won the presidency. That’s far less likely this time around, and not only because Donald Trump has the advantages of incumbency and smooth sailing through the primaries. It’s also because Biden is no cinch to win the Democratic nomination.

Within the party, Biden holds three huge advantages, three disadvantages, and one major question mark. Let’s sort them out.

Two of his advantages are obvious: his association with President Barack Obama and his ability to relate to blue-collar voters. Although the party has moved left since Obama’s day, the former president is still the most popular Democrat, by far. That helps Biden since he is the candidate most closely associated with Obama. That’s a big f***ing deal, as Joe would put it. He also benefits from Obama’s legacy as a proven national winner.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13/how-do-you-solve

“The left has forged an alliance of convenience with the more respectable elements of Islamic activists in the West in order to attack their common enemy, Western Civilization.”

Upon her accession to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall, practically the first words out of Rashida Tlaib’s mouth were: “We’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherf—er.” The object of the freshman Michigan Democrat’s derision was, of course, President Trump. This sentiment naturally got whoops and cheers from the guests at a MoveOn.org reception, who were there to celebrate the election of the Muslima from Dearbornistan, one of two female followers of Mohammed—the other is Ilhan Omar—now occupying chairs in the Capitol.

The triumphalism was multi-layered: not only had the Democrats—thanks, Paul Ryan!—retaken the House by both hook (free stuff for everybody except old toxic-male white guys, served up piping hot by the media) and crook (ballot harvesting in California that delivered once solidly Republican Orange County over to the Democrats) but, in the guise of “diversity,” they had also put two more co-religionists of the 9/11 hijackers into the Congress. Tlaib and Omar have wasted no time in getting to work against American norms and the republic itself.

Omar, born in Mogadishu, has been getting most of the attention lately; her unfiltered mouth can’t help but spout anti-Semitic drivel, and a recent attempt by a flailing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to rein her via a resolution against Jew hatred wound up as a boilerplate denunciation of “bigotry”—thus handing Omar a propaganda victory. As Britain’s hard-left Guardian put it in a headline: “Everyone’s against bigotry, right? Not 23 House Republicans, apparently.” Well played.

But Tlaib may be the more dangerous of the pair, cannily redoubling efforts to blame some (Jewish) Democrats’ antipathy to Omar’s casual slurs on . . . you guessed it: “I think Islamophobia is very much among the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. And I know that’s hard for people to hear, but there’s only been four members of Congress that are of Muslim faith. Three of them currently serve in this institution. More of us need to get elected, but more of us need to understand as we come into this institution that I have a lot of work to do with my colleagues.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/433633-rep-omar-and-anti-semitic-distractions

Imagine that a new member of Congress denounces Muslims as terrorists and suggests they’re more loyal to their faith than to America.Then imagine that a cross-section of politicians, pundits, and Muslim leaders denounce the ugly sentiments but also stress that Islamic-driven terrorism is a legitimate issue of debate; that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism; that Saudi Wahhabism fuels the intolerance that drives some Muslims to violence; that Islamic states in the Middle East discriminate harshly against Jews, Christians, and others; that Muslims aren’t the group in America that faces bigotry; and that the controversy over one lawmaker’s remarks are diverting attention from far more important issues around Islamic governments.

Inconceivable? Indeed. Instead, policymakers, opinion leaders, and religious figures would unite to condemn the remarks, denounce Islamophobia, and insist on a full-throated apology from the member.That highlights the double standard that far too many influential figures apply to anti-Semitism – a double standard that long predates the ugly utterances of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and the defenses of her supporters.Consider the multiple distractions that prevented a singular denunciation of Omar’s anti-Semitism.First, the Israel distraction.