RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bernie Sanders, with the regularity of a steam engine, has pounded away for months at the injustice, the wickedness, even the racism of “income inequality.” If ever there was a Johnny one-note on the American political scene, he is it. Yet almost nobody, and least of all his hapless opponent Hillary Clinton, has thought to call into question the ethical validity or inflammatory character of the covetousness this political slogan urges upon the public, with a recklessness that has visited untold calamities upon Europe. (Among politicians, Charlie Rangel of New York did have the temerity to say, “OK, income inequality… But does he [Sanders] have anything else to say?”) Has religious illiteracy now reached the point in America where the Tenth Commandment has been so entirely forgotten that the most blatant repudiations of it go unnoticed? Here it is, for the sake of those who have forgotten (or never knew):

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” — Exodus 20:17.

This last of the ten commandments, as Biblical commentators have often observed, differs from previous “negative” ones in that it prohibits not an action (murder, adultery, theft, false witness) but a state of mind—covetousness—that is at the root of most sins against our neighbors. No doubt John Stuart Mill, a far more literate liberal than Bernie Sanders, had it in mind when he complained that “’thou shalt not’ preponderates unduly over ‘thou shalt’” in Biblical morality.

The ethical wisdom of this commandment has all too often been demonstrated by the way in which covetousness expresses itself in the murderous character of “negative” politics, which directs the wrath of the covetous against a particular group. In Sanders’ typical stump speech, it is usually “Wall Street” or “the one percent.” In the rhetoric of the “Occupy Wall Street” and other “Occupy…” mobs that Sanders admires, it gets a bit more specific about attaching a name to “the one percent.” But most specific of all is Noam Chomsky, whom Sanders has praised as “a very vocal and important voice [sic] in the wilderness of intellectual life in America…a person who [sic] I think we’re all very proud of.” Chomsky, who has publicly endorsed his friend Sanders for the Democratic nomination, has strong views about just which group of Americans should be named as the chief target of an aggressive campaign of class warfare against “the rich and privileged” whom Sanders is daily berating. “Antisemitism,” Chomsky has declared, “is no longer a problem, fortunately. It’s raised, but it’s raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That’s why antisemitism is becoming an issue.” To this does covetousness very often lead. Is it even remotely possible that Sanders doesn’t know?

Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton makes Donald Trump look like a saint.

In 2008, Hillary hated Obama, bad-mouthed him, and ran against him in the primaries. She failed. Now she praises Obama and says what a wonderful president he is and has been from day one. Was she phony when she attacked him, or is she phony now, when she tries to use him as moral support?

Hypocrisy, thy name is contradiction for the sake of votes.

Why Hillary thinks Obama, who is not very popular, will save her, God knows. He is not considered one of our best presidents except by racially homogenous blacks, liberal Jews, and the ideological blind.

It’s interesting that the two most famous people in the race, Hillary and Trump, are harsh and obnoxious. Only Trump is honest and direct and has a record of accomplishment. Hillary is a feminist who has used her popular husband as a wedge into politics.

All that Hillary has done has a dark underside to it, whether it is the barnacles clinging to failed Hillarycare or the revolution in Libya.

Hillary failed to fortify Benghazi and lied to the families about the cause of their loved ones’ deaths. She blamed a video rather than al-Qaeda, even though she knew the truth.

When Hillary said, “What difference at this point does it make?,” she was telling us that the administration’s lie to the public about the influence of the video was irrelevant because the American people are irrelevant.

Hillary is a crook with a degenerate legacy that she shares with her pedophilic husband. Everyone she has touched falls through her fingers like sand.

Hillary, our potential commander-in-chief, offered us the Russian reset, yet we are in another cold war. She and that weakling Obama are no match for Putin, and they could be responsible for the end of the world. It might turn out that weakness rather than strength will be apocalyptic.

Remember Reagan tearing down the wall. Hillary and Obama have invited the Muslims and the Russians to step on our faces.

Where you come down on the Hillary Clinton email scandal is likely a matter of political—or at least candidate—preference.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus believes Hillary Clinton will get indicted. So does former attorney general Michael Mukasey, a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration, as does the Senate majority whip, John Cornyn of Texas.

Many—perhaps even most—Republicans believe the former secretary of state will face some sort of legal consequence for keeping classified information on her private email system.

Republicans cite the cases of national security adviser Sandy Berger, CIA director John Deutch, and General David Petraeus to show clear precedent for prominent officials facing consequences for mishandling classified information. They point to the preponderance of public evidence clearly and indisputably showing a bevy of classified information was stashed on Clinton’s home-brew server.

Democrats, no surprise, are curious to know what Republicans are smoking. Bernie Sanders famously declined to make an issue of the emails in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination. Clinton herself recently said in an interview that Republicans “live in that world of fantasy.” She added, when an interviewer raised the possibility of a perp walk: “There is not even the remotest chance that it’s going to happen.”

Perhaps Clinton’s opinion is not uninformed—her ties to the Department of Justice are deep, a benefit of being married to an ex-president, being a former U.S. senator, and serving as a cabinet member in the Obama administration. Her key spokesman, Brian Fallon, was the top press wrangler at Justice, and Eric Holder, the former attorney general who is believed still to be close to the president, is a big booster of her presidential candidacy.

I do not like or respect Donald Trump….but it is wrong to demean America voters who support him…and this long column from the summer of 2015 explains why…..Now, if he would only shut up and go away with John Kasich….rsk
Donald Trump is a troubling figure. The voters (temporarily) surging to him are deluding themselves. But the politicians and media who want to blame Trump or his supporters can find the real culprit in their own mirrors.

Donald Trump has gained political traction by demagoguing on an issue more responsible leaders have neglected.

Why has the Donald Trump candidacy—which so many professionals and pundits at first dismissed as a joke—flared this summer? In the first week of July, 15 percent of Republicans supported Trump for president in a YouGov poll. By the third week, that support had almost doubled, to 28 percent—with another 10 percent listing him as their second choice.

Something happened in July to send Trump’s numbers soaring. That something may have been the murder of Kathryn Steinle.

On July 5, the 32-year-old Steinle posed with her father for a photograph on a San Francisco pier at 6:30 on a Wednesday evening. Suddenly there was a pop. Steinle crumpled. She died in hospital two hours later.

The stunningly random killing left behind a devastated family—and a confessed killer: Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had been convicted of seven previous felonies and five times been ordered deported from the United States.

In 2009, Lopez crossed the border into the United States again, was caught, and was sentenced to four years in federal prison. After his federal sentence was served, Lopez-Sanchez was handed over to San Francisco authorities to face trial for a local drug charge. The local court dismissed the charge and ordered the Lopez-Sanchez released into the community. Nobody notified federal immigration authorities, because San Francisco law forbids such cooperation.
Altogether, 104,000 people who by law should have been deported were instead allowed to remain on American soil.

It’s often remarked that Donald Trump appeals to angry voters. That’s surely true. Yet there is a delicate discomfort about mentioning exactly the issue those voters—at least, those Republican voters—say they are most angry about: the breakdown of immigration enforcement. Trump holds a 2-1 lead over Jeb Bush among Republicans who want an immigration policy that focuses on enforcement and deportation.

Many leading politicians have expressed concern over Kathryn Steinle’s sad death. They typically represent the crime as something aberrational. Hillary Clinton, for example, said that San Francisco authorities “made a mistake” when they released Lopez-Sanchez into the community. Jeb Bush said, “The system broke down for [Steinle] and her family, and you can see why people are upset about that.”

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-see-it-Mussolini-vs-Lucrezia-Borgia-There-is-an-alternative-451287
American Jews are horrified by the choice they think will face them at November’s presidential election. If they adjust their perspective, however, there is another option.

Traveling in the US last week I found Jews, like many others, in a state of extreme agitation.

The Trump phenomenon, they raged, was beyond belief. How could America be doing this to itself, possibly nominating as a presidential candidate a man who was a crude and unstable know-nothing, a bigoted authoritarian and potential despot, a threat to America’s future and the entire world? They might have no option, said Republican Jews in despair, but to vote for Hillary.

No! cried others who were equally despairing.

How could you even think of voting for Hillary, what with the email scandal, with her past support for the PLO and the bullying way she treated Israel while she was secretary of state, with the Muslim Brotherhood types and other Israel-bashers in her close circle? Yes, granted, said the first group, but at least she’s an experienced politician, at least she’s kinda done the job already, at least she knows how to behave in government. What, came the response, after Benghazi? After the murder there of the ambassador and three others on her watch, the attempt to sanitize the atrocity and then the cover-up of that attempt, after her “What difference does it make” outburst at the congressional hearing? So it went on back and forth with voices raised: Trump vs Hillary, the unspeakable versus the uneatable, Mussolini versus Lucrezia Borgia. There was, it seemed, no alternative. None.

Um, what about, I asked in a very small voice, Ted Cruz? Wouldn’t he be an acceptable alternative? Both sides looked at me in horror. On this they were agreed. Ted Cruz was totally, but totally, unacceptable. Why? Because he was an ultra-conservative, evangelical Christian.

They’d all rather have even Hillary than Cruz as president. Really? So Hillary was not such a threat to America, the Jews and the world after all? I hold no particular brief for Cruz. I observe him from afar, and my information is necessarily inadequate as a result. But if you really believe that both Trump and Hillary pose such a threat to all we hold dear, what on earth does Ted Cruz stand for that makes him even worse than those two priceless specimens? I understand that many American Jews are socially liberal. I understand that, for them, social liberalism is in fact their religion. But in the context of today’s terrifying world, to consider a socially conservative viewpoint to be the biggest threat of all takes some explaining.

One obvious reason is the profound antipathy felt by many American Jews toward evangelical Christians. This is strange given that such Christians are the most stalwart and passionate supporters of Israel in the world today, far more so than Diaspora Jews.

Nevertheless, many American Jews regard them as a dire threat to the Jewish people.

The much-stated reason is that they want to convert the Jews at the “end of days.” Well, some evangelicals do and others don’t. And with those who do, I don’t know about you but I’ll take my chances on that when the apocalypse finally arrives.

Ah, say the American Christophobes, but these evangelicals are theologically anti-Semitic.

Well, many of these Jews’ liberal friends are politically anti-Semitic, singling out Israel as they do for blood libels and demonization. Is that perhaps a tolerable form of anti-Semitism in these Jews’ minds? To put it another way, which is better – the anti-Semite who hates Israel or the supposed anti-Semite (who may not be that at all) who loves Israel? Of all the presidential candidates, Cruz is the one who takes Israel’s part with the greatest clarity, passion and absence of any equivocation. He really gets it.

Last weekend, he wooed the Republican Jewish convention in Las Vegas and received a warm reception but from a wary crowd.

I love the New York Post…since we used to get The Bronx Home News which merged with The New York Post in 1948. It was delivered to our “stoop” on Bryant Avenue along with The Jewish Forward and the Herold Tribune. The “stoop” in those days was the flight of steps leading to the front door of a building….large or small, against which we played “stoop ball.”

Now the word “stoop” means ” to lower one’s moral standards so far as to do something reprehensible.”

And that is what the newspaper has done in it’s endorsement of a cur:
New York Post Criticizes ‘Rookie’ Trump in Scary Endorsement By Tyler O’Neil

“You can love Ted Cruz or hate him, but the Texas senator is actually clear on what he supports. John Kasich, who just received the endorsement of former New York Governor George Pataki, is a little fuzzier, but even he actually has a few concrete proposals. The Donald shifts in the political wind, and his supporters actually like that.

Like many Trump backers, the Post admits that The Donald is “a divisive, coarse, amateur,” as New York’s competing newspaper, the Daily News, shot back. The candidate will turn 70 years old this year, and they are expecting him to mature in record time, before the election.

“This endorsement of a man, in spite of himself, for the most powerful position in the world, is a shameful reflection not on what makes America great, but what makes us dumb as hell,” the Daily News’ Shaun King concludes.”

What Does John Kasich Think He’s Doing? By Matthew Continetti —

When John Kasich departs this earthly vale of tears, he ought to donate his brain to science. It could teach us a lot about irrational thinking.

The Ohio governor has won a single state: his own. He has 143 delegates. That puts him fourth in the count behind Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio — who is no longer a candidate.

To win the nomination on the first ballot of the Republican convention, Kasich would have to win 138 percent of the remaining delegates. This is impossible. Even a politician should be able to do that math.

To win on the second ballot, Kasich would have to outmaneuver Ted Cruz and his impressive delegate operation. That seems, let us say, beyond implausible.

To win on a subsequent ballot, when the nomination is up for grabs, Kasich would have to do something over the next two months that he seems constitutionally incapable of doing: show the slightest bit of selflessness and concern for the cause and the country and put those feelings ahead of his own narcissism, vanity, condescension, and sneering disdain for the party he seeks to lead.

What does that mean for Kasich in practice? Running against Trump where he’s strongest and ceding ground to Cruz where he’s weakest.

Kasich helps Trump. He can’t pretend otherwise. For months the anti-Trump forces have wanted nothing more than the ability to coalesce around a single challenger. One goofy man has stood in the way all along. He bit into Bush’s vote, into Christie’s, into Rubio’s. Now he’s biting into Cruz’s.

Dear Reader (including those of you who think we need a president who would leave the whole world blind, which would be inconvenient since e-mail newsletters in braille are technologically complicated),

It looks like the Trump body snatching virus I wrote about last month is spreading again. For a moment, after Wisconsin, it seemed like it might be going into remission. Nope, it’s actually spiking.

Last night the New York Post endorsed Donald Trump. After I criticized the editorial on Twitter, a Trump supporter tweeted at me “No Goldberg, you are wrong. Support the front runner and stop trying to burn the party. Unite it.”

This lover of unity and champion of party loyalty goes by the Twitter handle “TrumpOrRiot.” In all of the bilious argy-bargy and venomous folderol I’ve heard the last few months, nothing so economically encapsulates Trumpism more than calls for unity from a maroon who self-identifies as someone who thinks rioting is the only righteous alternative to his dashboard saint’s victory.

On the drive in to my office this morning, I heard Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn, one of the wisest and gentlest souls I’ve ever encountered, describe Trump as a “good and honest man” and “quite brilliant.” A few minutes ago on Twitter, the great semi-retired editorialist Don Surber said to me, regarding Trump, “You will come around. Others may not because they are childish.”

No. Just, no.

I won’t. Indeed, the only childishness I see are the masses of beer-muscled goons and sycophants stomping their feet over the object of their man-crushes.

The Trump Calculus

If a president Trump does the right thing, I will say he did the right thing — because that’s my job. But I will never look at that fleshy pile of vanity, crudity, and deceit and say, “There’s a good and honest man.” Yes, yes, we all believe in redemption, so maybe he could have some Oval Office conversion, find a God that doesn’t consider profit maximization to be the key measure of a man’s soul, and become a good and honest man. Maybe the sudden bowel-stewing realization that he’s wildly unqualified for the job of commander-in-chief will arouse in him a humility never displayed in his gaudy romp across our airwaves.

But that’s not the way I would bet. (It’s also a bit of a moot point, since I’m convinced Trump would lose very badly against either Sanders or Clinton.)

New York Post Criticizes ‘Rookie’ Trump in Scary Endorsement By Tyler O’Neil

The New York Post made a surprise endorsement on Thursday night, but it wasn’t exactly logical. Indeed, the editorial board seemed to be suffering under the same delusions hardcore supporters of Donald Trump entertain.

The Post based its endorsement on the fact that Trump is an accomplished businessman, but that he is also a “rookie” when it comes to politics. They assume he will do a full about-face from the primary to the general. This not only explains Trump’s policy simplicity and angry eccentricities, it excuses them. As the New York Daily News’ Shaun King declares, this “is so sad it’s actually kind of funny.”

The editors of the Post not only expect Trump to change his positions, they advise him on how to do so.

Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot — not just on the issues, but in his manner. The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned.

Yet the promise is clearly there in the rookie who is, after all, leading the field as the finals near.

Besides Trump’s astonishing success, the editors of the Post cannot name any concrete goals of his that they actually like. Oh, they find plenty of things they disagree with: pulling US troops out of Japan and South Korea, building a border wall, opposing trade deals without supporting free trade, and Trump’s coarse language and manners.

Nevertheless, Trump must be supported, because “he’s challenging the victim culture that has turned into a victimizing culture.” This is true, but how does it not apply to Ted Cruz? The editors “expect Trump to stay true to his voters,” but not to the positions or the personal style which attracted them in the first place.

Indeed, the publication goes so far as to call The Donald “an imperfect messenger carrying a vital message.” What is that message? It is “the best hope for all Americans who rightly feel betrayed by the political class.”

In the end, the Post trusts Trump because “he has the potential — the skills, the know-how, the values — to live up to his campaign slogan: to make America great again.” It ignores all evidence to contrary, much of which the editors themselves have mentioned in that very article!

This reminds me of something Jonah Goldberg wrote in National Review in March. The fact that Trump has attracted voters is treated as a justification for his outlandish proposals, even inviting comparisons to Ronald Reagan (who was also widely attacked in the media).

“Hated by the establishment, hated by the Left, Cruz is Obama’s nemesis. If he is elected, he will implement policies that unravel Obama’s legacy.If America opts for a demagogue, it will remain on its current trajectory.”

The US presidential race is President Barack Obama’s political legacy. Depending on who succeeds him, that legacy will either fade or become the new normal.
To understand what he has wrought, a good place to start is with the man running to Obama’s left: Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The socialist from Vermont knows how to play to the crowd. Sanders knows that the people captivated by his tales of avaricious bankers aren’t too keen on Jews either.
And as a Jew, he’s cool with that.

Sanders’s courtship of Jew-haters in a staple of his campaign. The depth of his efforts was made clear at the end of a campaign event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last Saturday when an audience member got up and began spewing anti-Jewish slanders.

Sanders doesn’t have a problem telling bigots off. He did just that at another event when a questioner asked a question he deemed anti-Muslim. Sanders is an unstinting champion of gay rights and black rights. So if he wanted to tell off a Jew-hater, he could have done so easily.

In the event, the questioner rose and said, “As you know, the Zionist Jews – and I don’t mean to offend anybody – they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign.”

Weathering a chorus of boos from his fellow audience members, the questioner then asked Sanders, “What is your affiliation to your Jewish community?” Sanders could have told the questioner to take a long walk off a short pier. He could have told him he’d rather win without the support of bigots.

He could have used it as a teaching moment and told his audience that millions of Jews have been murdered because of the lies the questioner just repeated.

Instead, he called him “Brother” and told he needed to hide his hatred better.