RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/a_democratic_presidential_candidate_says_both_sides_to_blame_for_shutdown_impasse.html

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is an unconventional Democrat. She deployed to Iraq with the Hawaii National Guard in 2005 and then promptly came out against American interventionism in the Middle East. She met with Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad. She joined Republicans in calling on President Obama to identify “radical Islam” as a major threat and refers to herself as a “hawk” on terrorism. She supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2016.

At one time, she was considered a “rising star” on the Democratic left. But while she is an economic progressive, her approach to foreign policy has angered the left.

She recently apologized for previous “anti-LGBTQ” statements, proving that on some issues, she is a very conventional Democrat. Now, having announced her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for president, she appears willing to stake out positions in opposition to her party.

Yesterday, she said that both sides are to blame for the shutdown logjam.

Politico:

“The problem here is that this issue, like so many others in Washington, are being relegated to partisan politics,” she said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Where if a Republican is putting forward a proposal, Democrats are going to shoot it down. If Democrats are putting forward a proposal, Republicans are going to shoot it down, really thinking about which party can call a win on this issue.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/kamala-harris-announces-2020-run-on-american-values-with-speech-in-silicon-valley/

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced her candidacy for the 2020 presidential election with a 1-minute video extolling “American values” and inviting supporters to join her … in Oakland — a rising liberal tech hub increasingly associated with Silicon Valley.

“Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom, democracy. These aren’t just words, they’re the values we as Americans cherish, and they’re all on the line now,” Harris began. “The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.”

Yet despite her references to “American values,” Harris also invited her supporters to join her for a speech in Oakland on Sunday, January 27.

While Harris was born in Oakland, the city still seems an odd choice for a first speech. Oakland is very large and very diverse, but it has extremely rich pockets and is a growing center for technology companies. It is increasingly associated with Silicon Valley.

Oakland is the birthplace of the Mai Tai and has the third highest concentration of lesbians. Silicon Valley in particular is known for sexual deviance and sexual harassment, not to mention the constant stigmatization of conservative views as “hateful” — something Kamala Harris in particular is quite familiar with.

Kamala Harris may have been born in Oakland, but that does not mean Americans want Oakland values. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/01/19/could_dems_2020_nominee_be_someone_youve_never_heard_of_139230.html

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — At 36, Pete Buttigieg is just over the minimum age required to be president of the United States. Outside South Bend, Indiana, the Rust Belt community where he’s been mayor since age 29, few people know his name. Those who know it struggle to pronounce it. (It’s BOO’-tah-juhj.)

None of that has deterred Buttigieg — a Democrat, Rhodes scholar and Navy veteran known to most people as “Mayor Pete” — from contemplating a 2020 presidential bid against a crowd of much better-known lawmakers with more experience and more money.

He’s among a number of potential candidates who believe the 2016 and 2018 elections showed that voters are looking for fresh faces and that the old rules of politics, in which lawmakers toil for years in statehouses or in Congress before aspiring to higher office, may no longer apply. They’re benefiting from Democrats’ fears about running another member of the party’s old guard against President Donald Trump in 2020.

The group includes Julian Castro, the 44-year-old former San Antonio mayor, and Tulsi Gabbard, the 37-year-old congresswoman from Hawaii, who’ve already said they’re running. Yet to decide is perhaps the biggest breakout star of the midterm elections, former three-term Rep. Beto O’Rourke, 46, who ran a tougher-than-expected race against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, a 38-year-old Iowa native, has also been spending time in the state with the nation’s first caucuses.

https://pjmedia.com/election/for-2020-dont-bet-on-beto/

On the phoniness level, Robert Francis O’Rourke (Columbia University, 1995) easily scores a ten. Passing himself off as “Beto” (a childhood nickname that is also short for “Roberto” in heavily Mexican El Paso), he quickly became a Democrat Party darling during his run against Rafael E. Cruz (“Ted”) for the Senate last year. O’Rourke put a scare into Cruz, an easily beatable candidate anywhere outside of Texas — and perhaps not even in Texas should he decide to run again in 2024. While he lost by less than three points, Cruz’s close shave put Beto on the national map, in large part because the national media decided that, with his bushy hair and chipmunk overbite, he was “Kennedyesque.”

So, he’s sitting pretty heading into the Democrat free-for-all in 2020, right? Not so fast, amigo:

For a moment in August, an event hall in Texas teemed with hope, taquitos and unity. It was a border-town stop for Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, but another Democratic politician commanded particular attention: Gina Ortiz Jones, a history-making congressional candidate — gay, Filipina-American, an Iraq war veteran — hoping to turn a majority-Hispanic district blue. “Really special person,” Mr. O’Rourke said, as Ms. Jones stood and waved.

But soon, a county chairwoman posed an uncomfortable question. Mr. O’Rourke had not endorsed Ms. Jones. In fact, he had elevated her Republican opponent, Representative Will Hurd, with frequent praise and, most memorably, a live-streamed bipartisan road trip that helped jump-start their midterm campaigns. Would Mr. O’Rourke support the Democrat?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/jewhatred_in_the_democratic_party.html

It is really time for the liberal American Jewish Democrat to acknowledge that blatant anti-Semitism has infected the Democratic Party.

Nancy Pelosi has appointed Ilhan Omar to the House Foreign Relations Committee. Omar is viciously anti-Israel and is in favor of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Omar has long been a harsh critic of Israel. In fact, in 2012 – just “a few days after Gaza-based Hamas terrorists had launched more than 150 deadly rockets into the Jewish state, prompting an Israeli military response – she tweeted that ‘the apartheid Israeli regime’ had ‘hypnotized the world’ in order to conceal its own ‘evil doings.'”

In fact, the only apartheid in the Middle East comes from Arab countries and is clearly documented by Muslim reporter Khaled Abu Toameh, who regularly highlights the Arab apartheid against Palestinians.

Furthermore, “in 2016, Omar stated that she was in favor of completely divesting the University of Minnesota of its Israel bonds. The following year, she opposed a bill designed to counter economic boycotts targeting the Jewish state.” In addition, “in 2018, Omar ran for the U.S. House of Representatives seat formerly held by Keith Ellison. Her campaign was supported by … the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which held three fundraising events on Omar’s behalf[.]”

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asserts that “the Democratic Party is increasingly anti-Israel and flirts, to be charitable, with anti-Semitism. Today we see the latest evidence of the character of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls the ‘New party.'”

https://freebeacon.com/politics/the-lackluster-democratic-field/

Beto O’Rourke is lost. The former Democratic congressman, who unsuccessfully challenged Ted Cruz in last year’s election, has spent the last few weeks in a confused and melancholy state. Something possessed him to share images from a recent dental cleaning, perhaps the grossest introduction of a potential presidential candidate in the nation’s history. He gave an interview to the Washington Post where the only specific plank in his immigration platform was opposition to President Trump’s border wall. In the same interview, he mused that the Constitution may no longer apply to the United States, since we’re an “empire” with troops deployed around the globe and “trading agreements.” Then he published a blog post that read like wannabe Kerouac. “Learned about pump storage, battery technology, the role that production tax credits have had in making New Mexico a leader in wind energy production,” he wrote. O’Rourke himself has no trouble generating hot air.

Beto isn’t merely the slightly flaky, out-of-work husband of a real-estate heiress. He’s running third in polls of the 2020 Democratic presidential field. His emo style and recent missteps exemplify the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the likely Democratic contenders. Judging from polls, Donald Trump is headed toward a one-term presidency. His best chance for reelection is pulling an opponent he can make as unpopular as he is. The Democrats seem more than willing to help him. In 1988, Democrats fielded the “seven dwarves” against George H.W. Bush. The 2020 cycle is shaping up to include 20 Smurfs. Trump is Gargamel.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rep-ilhan-omar-on-past-anti-semitic-tweet-those-were-the-only-words-i-could-think-about/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), asked during a Wednesday evening CNN interview about her claim that “Israel hypnotized the world,” explained that she resorted to the “unfortunate” language upon being overcome with emotion after seeing images of Israeli bombs falling on the Gaza strip.

“I remember when that was happening, watching tv and really feeling as if no other life was being impacted in this war and… those unfortunate words were the only words I could think about expressing at the moment,” Omar told CNN’s Christine Amanpour, referencing Israel’s 2012 airstrike offensive in Gaza.

“And what’s really important to me is that there is a difference between criticizing a military action by a government that has exercised really oppressive policies and being offensive…to particular people of faith,” she added.
Imam Mohamad Tawhidi ✔ @Imamofpeace
Rep. @Ilhan Omar says her anti-semitic tweets were the only words she could think of when Israel attacked Gaza. Can she please show us her tweets against terrorist Hamas when they recently launched rockets onto a Jewish kindergarten?

They don’t exist.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/beto_bombs_bigly_in_long_interview_with_the_washington_post.html

When a CNN anchor warns that “it’s a fine line to walk between being a blank canvas and an empty vessel,” a pretty-boy, Kennedyesque empty-suit progressive candidate, already recognizable by his first name alone, is in trouble.

Beto looks like a beta, if we are to judge by the Washington Post’s account of his “lengthy” interview with Post writer Jenna Johnson. The title gives away the verdict: “Beto O’Rourke’s immigration plan: No wall but no specifics.” The lead paragraphs are no kinder. Jenna Johnson wrote:

In a digital ad that recently went viral, Beto O’Rourke tore into President Trump’s desired border wall with soaring footage of the Rio Grande Valley and an explanation of what the wall would do: cut off access to the river, shrink the size of the United States and force the seizure of privately-held land.

It noted that most undocumented immigrants [sic] who arrived in the United States in the past decade came not over the border but on visas that then expired.

So what should be done to address visa overstays?

“I don’t know,” O’Rourke said, pausing in a lengthy interview.

The vacuity was so obvious that even CNN anchor Brianna Keilar felt compelled to raise the alarm. The segment is embedded below, but Tommy Christopher of Mediaite cuts to the chase:

Keilar brought up O’Rourke’s recent interview with The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson, during which O’Rourke seemed to have trouble answering several questions.

“He was asked how he would handle immigrants who overstay their Visas, and he said ‘I don’t know’,” Keilar said. “On withdrawing troops from Syria, he said there may be a good reason, but he doesn’t necessarily understand. He seemed to be passing on a lot of stuff, the Constitution, he questioned whether a 230 year-old document can be used as a guide for today’s issues, especially international issues.

https://spectator.org/the-state-of-the-shutdown/
Dem SOTU stunt signals their growing desperation.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have much in common with the character Fortunato in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado.” Having been lured into a political oubliette and chained to a wall, they are now being systematically immured by a man upon whom they have heaped countless insults. Like Poe’s ill-fated character, they hadn’t sobered up enough from their recent successes to realize that their antagonist was leading them into a trap when he declared in front of the cameras during their December White House meeting, “I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”

Stumbling blindly along with Trump down the murky path to the shutdown, they had no clue they would now find themselves desperately attempting to put a halt to the President’s State of the Union address. This pathetic maneuver reveals the damage they incurred pursuant to Trump’s recent Oval Office speech, which they made worse by their comically inept rebuttal. The damage has now reached the point where Pelosi and Schumer are facing growing revolts in their own conference, particularly among freshman Democrats in the House, over their refusal to even negotiate with the President. Breitbart reports:

House Majority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Pelosi’s second-in-command, says that Democrats are unified in their opposition to negotiating with President Trump on the wall.… But a quick look around the Democrat conference to see what rank-and-file Democrats are saying about their leadership — Pelosi and Hoyer on the House side, and Schumer and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin on the Senate side — proves that Hoyer’s claim of unity is simply untrue.