RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pseudo-impeachment-11557271242

House Democrats are escalating their campaign against the Trump Administration with complaints that its resistance to Congressional requests for documents is a threat to democracy. It’s more accurate to say that Democrats are performing what amounts to a pseudo-impeachment so they don’t have to undertake a real one.

Democrats are agonizing over impeachment because while they’re itching to do it, special counsel Robert Mueller’s report blew up their Russian collusion hopes. He also took no position on obstruction of justice while reporting a highly critical “analysis” of President Trump’s actions. Democrats now find themselves caught between a left-wing base that says they’ll abdicate their duty if they don’t impeach and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cold-blooded calculation that it could cost their majority in 2020.
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What to do? Democrats have decided to act out a pseudo-impeachment that claims Mr. Trump and his Administration are committing offenses against the Constitution without daring to open a formal impeachment inquiry. The split-level goal is to appease the left while sparing the swing-district Democrats who delivered the 2018 majority from ever having to vote on articles of impeachment.

ttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/07/why_biden_leads_the_democratic_field_140259.html

Why does Joe Biden, with all his obvious weaknesses, currently lead the Democratic presidential field?

A big part of the answer is that his party knows him, likes him, and respects his years of fighting for their side. They also know his manifold shortcomings. He is not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. He is prone to gaffes—often big ones—and makes inexplicable policy errors, like his statement last week that China is hardly a U.S. adversary. His years of Washington experience leave him with a vulnerable record of votes and statements, many of them out-of-step with today’s electorate, especially Democratic activists. He is a consummate Washington insider in an era when everybody wants an outsider. Even worse, some of his insider connections apparently benefited his family, especially his son Hunter, who flew with the vice president on official trips and then forged profitable business ties in those countries.

With all those negatives, why is Joe Biden leading the 2020 Democratic field?

One reason cannot be stressed enough: He loves campaigning—old-fashioned, “retail” stops where pols slap backs, kiss babies, shake hands, and toss red meat to the crowd. (Smelling hair is less welcome.) Americans are attracted to candidates who project upbeat, positive images, candidates who enjoy being with them and asking for their support. What they don’t like are finger-wagging school principals who tell them to eat their broccoli. That’s why Elizabeth Warren does not wear well. Most of the other candidates don’t seem to connect at all. The only exceptions are South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and possibly New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Biden is a happy contrast to this glum crowd. Like President Trump, he has fun at his rallies and is energized by the cheers. The downside is that Biden’s improvisations often end with his foot wedged in his mouth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-burdens-of-berniecare-11557091123

Bernie Sanders sells Medicare for All as a simple idea: “You will have a card which has Medicare on it, you’ll go to any doctor that you want, you’ll go to any hospital that you want.” So the Congressional Budget Office provided a public service last week by describing, albeit in thick and cautious bureaucratese, what it would really take to float BernieCare.

Democrats asked CBO to lay out some parameters of how to set up single-payer, hoping to elude analysis of any one bill in Congress. The latter would carry political accountability—and a price tag. Instead CBO walks through “key design components and considerations” in a report that aims to bore and deploys the word “could” 209 times.

Yet even this limited analysis is instructive about the “major undertaking” of single payer, as CBO puts it in hilarious understatement. CBO acknowledges, for example, that a transition that includes moving 160 million people from employer-sponsored coverage to single payer would be “complicated, challenging, and potentially disruptive” to health care and the economy. You don’t say.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/5/amy-klobuchar-credits-obama-not-trump-booming-econ/

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, refused Sunday to credit President Trump for the booming economy, insisting that former President Barack Obama deserves a pat on the back after Friday’s jobs report showed the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.

The Democratic presidential primary contender pointed to American workers, businesses and Mr. Obama when asked about the sunny economic figures, including rising wages, 260,000 new jobs, and a 3.6 percent unemployment rate, the lowest since 1969.

“You know what I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about when we were in that downturn, and President Obama came into office and he had to deal with that with the Congress to try to one, right the financial industry, and two, and get us on the road to recovery,” Ms. Klobuchar said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I remember that the Republicans were giving him grief when he took any credit for that,” she added. “So I think that we have had policies in place starting with President Obama that have aided that recovery.”

Her response came after CNN host Jake Tapper asked, “Unemployment is the lowest it’s been since I was nine months old. You’re really not going to give President Trump any credit for that in terms of his tax cuts, his deregulation, or anything he’s done?”

https://nypost.com/2019/05/04/ticket-prices-plunge-for-bill-and-hillary-clintons-speaking-tour/

Tickets to the latest stop on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour were going for as little as $20 on the secondary market as their 13-city adventure continued to struggle to find an audience.

The best seats in the house at Seattle’s WaMu Theater on Friday could be had for $829, a steep 54% drop from the $1,785 that the former first couple fetched when the tour was announced in early November.

But organizers soon had to slash listed prices and even offer discount ducats through Groupon to boost sales.

The official prices for Friday’s appearance ranged from $66.50 to $519, the Seattle Times reported.

“I really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis,” Hillary Clinton opined during the 90-minute performance, presented as an interview of her and her husband by actor Bradley Whitford. “This is a test for our country.”

“These people, they don’t believe the same set of rules apply to them that apply to everyone else,” Bill Clinton said of the Trump administration.

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-05-03/2020-democrats-begin-to-joust-while-joe-biden-stays-focused-on-trump

The opening months of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have largely been an amicable, well-mannered affair.

There are sudden signs that’s about to change.

This week, several candidates tossed brushback pitches against rivals, with most of the heat being directed at Joe Biden, whose newly minted front-running candidacy appeared to open the door to a more contentious phase of the campaign.

“The Democratic race began in earnest last week,” says Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network think tank. “And Biden’s surge is likely to cause other candidates to start going after him.”

Both Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts served up policy contrasts with the former vice president, pointing out past positions he took that they believe are out of sync with today’s Democratic Party.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey swiped at Sanders for advocating for voting rights for the incarcerated. And Jay Inslee, the Washington governor who is making climate change the centerpiece of his longshot bid, took aim at Beto O’Rourke’s commitment to a plan to solve the problem.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/02/obama-era_spying_is_now_a_political_risk_for_biden_140226.html

It’s been a very good week for Joe Biden. The former senator and vice president is the clear frontrunner in a crowded Democratic field for 2020. His poll ratings and campaign fundraising surged after he announced his presidential run last week.

One of Biden’s biggest assets is his close association with Barack Obama. He may not have the former president’s endorsement yet (Biden says, unconvincingly, that he didn’t want it), but Joe knows how popular Obama still is and how much his candidacy benefits from that reflected glow. Expect him to talk a lot about the Obama-Biden years.

Anything that undermines the 44th president’s legacy hurts all Democrats, and Biden most of all. That’s the danger posed by Attorney General Bill Barr’s commitment to investigate how the massive, prolonged investigation into “Trump-Russia collusion” began, whether it was conducted properly, and how information from it was illegally leaked to the media.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/01/a-tribe-of-her-own/

“Today’s Democratic oligarchs have the perfect disguise. With their “protecting the little guy” posture, they appear to be on the side of lower classes when they are really protecting and extending their own privileges. Student loan forgiveness is just the latest example in a long chain of hypocrisy and deception.”

As presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren continues to find her people among the Democratic Party base, the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts has been slinging government proposals like arrows at the battle of Little BigHorn.

Yet with her recent plan to forgive tens of billions in student loans and make college free, the former Harvard professor serves a tribe that may adopt her. And though her candidacy may soon be seeking a burial ground, her proposal likely will live on as it resonates with many tribes within the Democratic base.

Warren proposed student loan forgiveness for anyone up to $50,000 in student debt. On a sliding scale for high earners, the proposal applies to anyone making under $250,000 a year. As it stands, Warren’s plan can work with loans taken out for any type of degree—even if you only took out a few extra loans to get your MBA at Yale.

Warren insists that those who stand to benefit from this proposal are the working class, minorities, and middle-class people. This gets much harder to believe when you break down who actually goes to college and who goes into debt while going to college.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/hey_mazie_hirono_who_do_you_work_for.html

“Additionally, Mazie, in this country we don’t just “believe women,” we believe evidence.  As an attorney, you should know that, and if you don’t know the basics, then perhaps you are not fit to serve.  Men do not need to “shut up!” as you audaciously advised.  In this country we all have a voice. ”

Hey Mazie Hirono! Who do you work for? Who is pulling your strings? Surely, it’s not the people of Hawaii or the rest of the country.

Your father left the family when you were very young, and your mom managed to bring you and your two siblings to Hawaii. She supported the family by working long hours to put a roof over your head and food on the table. In spite, of your meager surroundings, you managed to get yourself a fine education at the University of Hawaii and prestigious Georgetown Law School.

One would expect gratitude for the opportunity this country offered you, but instead you shamefully and ungratefully had the gall to state to your staff that “people are getting screwed in this country every single second, minute, hour of the day.” So, the country that took you in, housed you, fed you, clothed you, and educated you is a country that “screws” everyone every second of every day? Doesn’t look like you were screwed, but it does look like you are the one who is screwing the good people of this country.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/30/ilhan-omars-collusion-islamists-acceptable/

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has distinguished herself with often offensive, outrageous, and unpatriotic rhetoric. One week she invokes classic anti-Jewish tropes. The next she trivializes the September 11 jihadist attacks. Another it is unearthed that she espouses morally relativistic if not overtly anti-American views about U.S. soldiers, the very ones who fought to defend civilians in her native Somalia to boot.

Omar’s penchant for provoking millions of Americans with odious words has masked the related, equally if not more troubling, elements of her associations, ideology, and background.

Consider Omar’s Meeting with Turkey’s President

Consider, for example, the revelation, largely unnoticed outside of conservative media, that as a Minnesota Assemblywoman Omar had a closed-press meeting in fall 2017 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to a curiously now-deleted article from the local Somalian-language periodical in her district, the Tusmo Times, she and the Islamist authoritarian president met during his U.N. General Assembly visit to New York.