RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/zina-bash-hand-signal-lef-wing-theory-stupid/

How does the Zina Bash hand-signal theory make any sense at all?

It’s not easy to set a new standard for stupid in 2018, but a few left-wingers on Twitter managed it during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

They claimed to have seen one of Judge Kavanaugh’s former law clerks, Zina Bash, making a white-power symbol while sitting behind him at the opening session of the hearings.

Less discerning viewers wouldn’t have noticed the alleged signal at all, or if they had, would have easily mistaken it for Bash’s hand at rest in something like a gesture of OK.

It was declared “a national outrage” by a #resistance tweeter who has 200,000 followers, and the activist and author Amy Siskind said the supposed gesture alone should disqualify Kavanaugh (she deleted the tweet but still suspected that Bash’s hand represented something nefarious).

It’s not clear how the hand-signal theory was supposed to make sense. Why, if Judge Kavanaugh is a stealth white-power candidate, would someone on his side go out of her way to advertise that fact on national TV?

On the other hand, if Judge Kavanaugh is a brazen white-power candidate, why does a supporter have to rely on such a subtle gesture to signal his true colors?

Who was the audience for the gesture? A racist underground initiated in a series of secret symbols and handshakes that would be activated to lend its full support for Kavanaugh?

Who knows, and who cares? For an element of the Left, the Trump era has been an open invitation to lose their minds, one they have gladly accepted for fun and profit, since there are few things said about the president that can be too extreme or irrational to find an audience.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-character-assassination-by-democrats/

There are honorable ways to oppose a nominee with whom you disagree. Kavanaugh’s Democratic critics have chosen to go the dishonorable route, instead.

There is certainly an honorable way to oppose the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. It’s simple. A progressive senator can simply declare that he or she does not agree with Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy, explain why, and vote against him. There is no constitutional rule that declares a senator must vote for every qualified Supreme Court nominee.

There’s also an honorable way to investigate Kavanaugh’s fitness for the bench, regardless of his judicial philosophy. A judge at any level — much less the Supreme Court — should exhibit a basic and enduring commitment to honesty and integrity. So, yes, scrutinize his record. Diligently investigate his background. If a serious character issue emerges, expose it.

But it’s low and dishonorable to skip the principled opposition and simply smear a good man, engaging in cheap character assassination as Judge Kavanaugh’s Democratic opponents have this week.

For those keeping score at home, millions of Americans have now been exposed to false and ridiculous claims that Kavanaugh is a slippery perjurer who surrounds himself with racists and a cold, dark soul who deliberately snubbed a murdered child’s father.

The latter two claims date back to the first day of his hearing, when the online Left erupted with claims that former Kavanaugh clerk Zina Bash had flashed a white-power symbol during the hearing. It turns out that Bash is a Mexican-American immigrant with a Jewish father, a descendant of Holocaust survivors. So, no, she’s not a white nationalist.

The same day, activists claimed that Kavanaugh actively refused to shake Fred Guttenberg’s hand. Guttenberg is the father of a student murdered in February’s Parkland, Fla. school shooting, and he approached Kavanaugh in the scrum following a break in the hearing. Just as Guttenberg, a complete stranger to Kavanaugh, stuck out his hand, security arrived and ushered Kavanaugh away. This was then cravenly spun into an outrage by the progressive Internet.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271264/times-op-ed-definitive-proof-nevertrump-moral-bruce-thornton

The New York Times’s just published an anonymous op-ed from a “senior official” in the Trump administration. This self-righteous combination of clichéd anti-Trump tropes and arrogant moral preening puts the QED on the proof of the NeverTrumpers’ moral idiocy.

The stalest complaints involve Trump’s personality and style, although the only difference between Trump and, say, Lyndon Johnson is that Johnson with the help of the media knew that most of his vulgarisms and epithets would never be made public until he left office. And he wasn’t monitored 24/7 by a barrage of reports and images from internet news and blogs, hundreds of cable channels, and social media.

As for crudity and vulgarity, if you insurgent White House employees want vulgarity, just look around you. We are saturated with a culture of vulgarity, self-promotion, and crude sexualization. At least Trump hasn’t besmirched the White House with Clinton-style sexual antics, or like Obama brought foul-mouthed rappers who celebrate the murder of judges to socialize in the White House. But to Anonymous, the worst of Trump’s affronts is that he, with the help of deplorable uppity citizens, has “allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.” This charge bespeaks an ignorance of the Constitution and its founders’ understanding of human nature. Given the variety and volume of colliding “passions and interests,” “civility” was a luxury. More important was protecting political freedom by preventing factions from joining forces to increase their power.

The catalogue of Trump’s shortcomings are stale, subjective epithets from nearly two-years of Trump-hating screeds, without any awareness that in terms of actions, progressives like Barack Obama have been much worse. For example, the brave anonymous resister says Trump’s behavior is “detrimental to the health of our republic.” Exactly how have excessive Tweeting, braggadocio, or insults of rivals done more damage to the Constitution’s separation of powers than Obama’s politicizing of the IRS, the EPA, two AGs, the Department of Education, the FBI, and the DOJ?