RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/jussie-smollett-case-kamala-harris-ignores-questions-on-hoax-after-dining-with-al-sharpton/

Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) on Thursday refused to comment on the hate-crime hoax apparently perpetrated by Empire actor Jussie Smollett, when asked about the case while leaving a Harlem, N.Y. restaurant with Al Sharpton, who famously publicized the fraudulent hate-crime claim made by Tawana Brawley in the late 1980s.Harris, who previously called the allegedly faked hate crime a “modern day lynching,” has refused to retract her initial claim despite the Chicago Police Department’s Thursday morning assertion that Smollett paid two associates to stage the attack.Asked earlier this week about the tweet in which she said Smollett was effectively lynched, Harris seemed unfamiliar with the message and said she could not comment on the case until all the details came to light.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ocasio-cortez-boyfriend-troubles-reveal-the-corruption-at-the-heart-of-her-campaign/

Last week, an enterprising conservative political consultant unearthed evidence that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) may have hired her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, to work in Congress. This news actually unraveled a far bigger story of corruption, however. As it turns out, a political group helping Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign had already paid Roberts during the campaign — and those payments from that shady organization may be the reason Ocasio-Cortez is in Congress today.

On Wednesday, Luke Thompson, a podcast host and former staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), shared some damning research into Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign. He discovered more about the relationship between Riley Roberts and the campaign, but he also unearthed a humongous corruption story.

Luke Thompson had originally unearthed the central piece of evidence tying Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional office to Riley Roberts — her boyfriend’s official congressional staff email. In the wake of this news, some people noticed that the Ocasio-Cortez campaign paid Roberts $1,750, but Thompson insisted this was only “a means of keeping accounting in order.” During the first half of 2018, the boyfriend volunteered with the campaign, and his efforts were classified as an in-kind contribution. This is normal.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-raises-eyebrows-after-comparing-trumps-border-wall-to-berlin-wall

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised eyebrows after comparing President Trump’s border wall plans to the Berlin Wall separating communist Germany from the free world.

The New York Democrat made her remarks during a livestream for supporters on Friday, where she spoke out about the scrutiny she received ever since she won the election last year and dethroned top Democrat Joe Crowley.

“No matter how you feel about the wall, I think it’s a moral abomination,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the issue of the border wall that Trump has been pushing for since getting into office.

“I think it’s like the Berlin Wall. I think it’s like any other wall designed to separate human beings and block out people who are running away from the humanitarian disasters. I just think it’s wrong,” she added.

The Berlin Wall, which became the most notable border of the “Iron Curtain” during the Cold War, was built following the Soviet Union’s recommendation amid an exodus of Germans living under the communist rule in East Germany following World War II and the partition of the country.

The wall, guarded by soldiers on the East’s side, was a way to block the East Germans from fleeing communism to West Berlin and West Germany, a free and Democratic country. Multiple people were shot by the soldiers in their desperate efforts to escape East Berlin.

“Dear @AOC: Let me serve as your private professor here. The Berlin Wall was meant to keep people inside the socialist/communist utopia and stop them from fleeing to the decadent capitalist west. So as the New Millennial Lenin, you might want to refrain from using this example,” Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at the John Molson School of Business, tweeted.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/676923000/bernie-sanders-enters-2020-presidential-campaign-no-longer-an-underdog?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is giving it another go, launching a second campaign for the White House four years after surprising Democrats with a strong bid for the party’s 2016 nomination.

“We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it’s time to move that revolution forward,” the independent senator told Vermont Public Radio in an interview airing Tuesday morning.

But this 2020 bid will undoubtedly be a very different presidential campaign than his quest for the Democratic nomination as an underdog in 2016. Sanders enters the race as a top contender who, along with former Vice President Joe Biden, tops most early polls, far outpacing other Democratic candidates in support and name identification.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/amy_klobuchar_shoots_herself_in_the_foot_with_comments_on_the_aurora_shooting.html

Only a week after launching her presidential campaign decrying global warming during a snowstorm in Minneapolis, the woman who wants to claim the mantle of a “moderate” Democrat has beclowned herself with a nonsensical statement. Even worse, as a veteran prosecutor — county attorney (D.A.) in the most populous county in Minnesota, responsible for all criminal prosecution — she missed a point squarely within her area of purported professional competence.

Screen grab from Twitter.

The Hill posted a video to Twitter of her campaigning in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (friendly territory not too far from the Minnesota border), claiming that the mass shooting in Aurora, Illinois shows that “It is time to put sensible gun control legislation in place.”

One problem: the shooter in Aurora was already prohibited by existing laws from having a firearm. The problem was that existing laws weren’t enforced. Via The Daily Wire:

During a Saturday press conference, Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said that the suspect had previously been arrested on six separate occasions by the Aurora Police Department, “including arrests for traffic and domestic battery-related issues.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/14/heres-system-it-sucks-meet-hill-staffers-ocasio-cortez-has-tapped-upend-washington/?utm_term=.cbc4f90621df

One is the daughter of an immigrant from Nigeria who wanted to understand the causes of her mom’s plight, starting a search that would lead her to Spelman, Oxford, Harvard, Georgetown, the State Department and, eventually, the halls of Congress.

The other was raised by a single mother in trailer parks and public housing in eastern Tennessee, becoming an avowed foe of the ultrawealthy whose Twitter handle reads: “Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure.”

The two have landed the two policy jobs with first-term Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who received about 5,500 job applications for her office — a record, according to experts.

Ariel Eckblad, 31, the congresswoman’s legislative director; and Dan Riffle, 37, a legislative assistant, will help steer Ocasio-Cortez as one of the most high-profile members of Congress.

They will help shape how Ocasio-Cortez works as an activist hoping to refashion the Democratic Party, while she also tries to serve as a more typical member building coalitions and moving legislation.

Ocasio-Cortez’s team made its first high-profile mistake late last week, as staffers accidentally released and then retracted a fact sheet about the Green New Deal that had won the support of most of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates and more than 60 House Democrats.

Many freshman lawmakers avoid the national spotlight, and it is very rare for their staffers to speak out. But just as Ocasio-Cortez is blasting away some of the conventions of politics, so is her team.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/democrats-went-crazy-in-three-months/

As centrists, they would clean up in 2020, but instead, it’s leftward ho!

The Democrats swept to power in Congress by campaigning in a way that has been successful for Democrats for generations. “Republicans will take away your health care,” they said, after having focus-grouped it. Now we are preparing for a 2020 campaign in which Donald Trump and Republicans can as easily advertise to the public: “Democrats will take away cows, and your car.” What happened to Democrats?

Back in November, it looked like Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House caucus had found the perfect plan for their party in the era of Trump: Avoid talking about impeachment and stick to simple bread-and-butter issues. Don’t tell swing voters that they are deplorable for having supported Donald Trump, instead, promise to protect the most popular features of Obamacare. Also, remind voters that Republicans cut taxes for the rich. Except for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ran in a deep-blue district, most of the boundary-pushing progressive candidates lost their elections. All signs pointed to the idea that Democrats just had to be the normal party, and the upper Midwest would snap back in 2020.

But progressives have decided to push the envelope anyway. Fearing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, blue states such as New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia set about passing expanded legal protections for various later-term abortions. This led to the governor of Virginia’s unforgettable discussion about providing “comfort” to a child born out of a botched abortion before “a decision” is made about whether that child should live or be made to die.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/former-governor-bill-weld-forming-an-exploratory-committee-to-challenge-trump/

Former Massachusetts Republican Governor and Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Bill Weld announced he is forming an exploratory committee with the intention of challenging the president of the United States in the GOP primaries.

Fox News reports that Weld made the announcement at “Politics and Eggs,” “a must stop in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire for any White House hopeful.”

“I am establishing an exploratory committee to pursue the possibility of my running for the presidency of the United States as a Republican in the 2020 election. I encourage those of you who are watching the current administration nervously but saying nothing to stand up and speak out,” Weld declared.

Weld is living a fantasy, as are most anti-Trump elements in the Republican Party who are looking for someone to save them from the president. They believe that there is a large number of Republican rank and file who have been intimidated into keeping their mouths shut about their opposition to Trump. This is silly. All signs point to Trump being embraced by almost the entire Republican Party. Any challenge to Trump makes Ahab’s hunt for the white whale look reasonable.

Weld warned in his speech that “our country is in grave peril and I cannot sit quietly on the sidelines anymore.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/some-really-stupid-people-our-catastrophically-clueless-congress/

Ever since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the scene I’ve fantasized about interviewing her. I wouldn’t ask her about her big socialist ideas or how she’d pay for them; as far as I’m concerned, it’s already been amply demonstrated that she knows nothing about economics or the history of socialism. Instead, I would ask her to find, say, Kazakhstan on a map. I would ask her to name five chemical elements, four Canadian provinces, and three Shakespeare plays. I would ask her which king signed Magna Carta. I would ask her to name one Russian novelist, one French newspaper, the fourth president of the United States, and the third book of the Bible.

And so on. Basic stuff. It shouldn’t be too much to expect a member of the U.S. Congress to be able to answer questions of this sort. Indeed, it shouldn’t be too much to expect a high-school graduate to be able to answer every one. But I suspect Ocasio-Cortez would be stumped by most if not all of them.

And would her fans care? Probably not.

She’s far from the only person on Capitol Hill who’s factually challenged to what I would consider a crippling degree. The other day Cory Booker told an interviewer “I do not speak Swiss.” It seems fair to conclude from this that he actually thinks there is a language called Swiss. In fact Switzerland has four official languages – French, German, Italian, and Romansch. I knew this as a kid. I assumed it was common knowledge. I realize otherwise now.