RUTHFULLY YOURS

Here’s my 10-minute summary of the CNN Republican debate (which should have been renamed the CNN-Pssst-did-you-hear-that-nasty-thing-one-Republican-said-about-another-Republican debate):

The Winners:

Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina were the two standouts in Wednesday’s debate.

Rubio brought an appealing mix of the common touch and tough talk on foreign policy to the debate stage. Unlike some other candidates, he didn’t seem like he was elbowing his way into the debate, so it “felt” like he was a featured speaker. He sounded like the grownup in the room when he tussled with Trump on foreign policy. Trump grimaced and rolled his eyes, but offered no substantive rebuttal. Rubio has a nice way of dispensing with an opponent without sounding angry.

Fiorina was smart and scrappy. Her Planned Parenthood screed was fantastic. She rightly redirected the focus away from the faux “women’s healthcare” straw man (straw woman?) to the real issue of Planned Parenthood selling chopped-up babies. Other candidates ought to take note. Carly does need to soften her edges a bit because she tends to dial it up to harsh and stay there.

Middle of the Pack:

Ted Cruz was brilliant and in command of the facts (despite the fact that Jake Tapper cut him off at nearly every pass). It occurred to me that Mike Huckabee could do a great service to his country by dropping out of the race and coaching Cruz on the common touch. Cruz’s talking points are spot on, but he is missing warmth and the ability to connect on a personal level.

Mike Huckabee’s shining moment was his defense of religious liberty. He noted that GITMO prisoners are afforded more religious accommodations than county clerks in Kentucky. He has a point.

Chris Christie also had a good night and he landed some solid blows in Trump’s direction. But he was crowded out by Carly and Rubio, so viewers will likely only remember his “You kids stop fighting or I’ll pull this debate over!” moment when he told Carly and Trump to knock it off.

The international left wasted no time in using the below tragic image as fodder for the multiculturalism/open borders war, suggesting that somehow the West’s reluctance to provide safe haven for potentially every human being on the planet is responsible for the death of this 3-year-old boy and the other displaced people with whom he was traveling.

The reason these people left their homes is not in dispute. They were fleeing ISIS and their trademark hellish barbarism. Why is there an ISIS? Because our president is determined to create an Islamic counterbalance to perceived Western hegemony.

Europe and America are too strong, and they achieved their success on the backs of the oppressed peoples of the world, most notably the peaceful Islamic peoples of the Middle East. So goes the narrative.

If there were only some political construct that could unite the oppressed Islamists in a sort of “pan-Arabic Islamic Union,” then the Muslims of the world could take their place among the economic privileged of the world, functioning like an Islamic version of the European Union, or our NAFTA, eliminating their need to lash out in acts of barbarity that (of course!) can be fueled only by their righteous anger at their exploitation by the Western powers.

This is the Arab Spring, folks. It has never been a democracy movement, nor is it a cry for self-government; it is a movement to replace largely secular non-Islamist governments with fully Islamist theocratic regimes that will eventually fall under the umbrella of a restored caliphate, led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

For those who thought the idea of importing 10,000 “Syrian refugees” was bad enough and who feared the number would go even higher, it just did.Much, much higher.

Per Bloomberg:

Wednesday at the White House, the most senior national security officials will discuss raising the limit on the number of refugees from around the world allowed to enter the United States — from 70,000 this year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in fiscal 2017, three administration officials told me. If members of the National Security Council Principals Committee agree on the plan, it will be sent to President Obama’s desk, and administration sources say he is likely to quickly approve it.

Got that? Obama wants to import 250,000 more Muslims in the next two years. And what better cover than to appear compassionate and compelled to act after seeing “images of children washing up on European shores”? The talking point is that these images “spurred the Obama administration into action” to ensure we take in “our fair share.”

Obama must be frothing at the mouth to have this excuse to flood the United States with more Muslims. Because it is an excuse and nothing more since we know full well that as Christians in the Middle East have been kidnapped, raped, enslaved, and murdered in all manner of horrific ways, Obama has not been “spurred” to action.

Substance only appeared after Christie, to his credit, chided the moderator for spending so much time on spats among Rand Paul, Kasich, Bush, Fiorina and the Trump….CNN questions became virtually irrelevant as Rubio, Christie and Fiorina stepped up the debate and the substance….rsk
Candidates fielded questions ranging from immigration and national security to the economy.

Attitude met substance on a California debate stage Wednesday night. And if substance didn’t win, it at least made a comeback.

For two months, the Republican presidential race has been dominated by Donald Trump, whose approach has been to boast about his leadership style—“I’m a winner, I’ll negotiate great deals”—while skirting past detailed policy discussions.

The remainder of the field was left fuming, talking about Mr. Trump and seeing media coverage flow his way. What they weren’t doing was talking about their agendas.

That changed in the debate at the Reagan presidential library in California. While many of the questions posed by the CNN moderators began with a recitation of comments Mr. Trump has made, which left him still at the center of the conversation, his competitors managed to launch a conversation that, for the first time in weeks, got beyond the Trump orbit.

Frustration, anger, despair. Allow life’s negatively charged emotions to run free long enough and they all arrive at the same place—madness. We are there.Or many of us are, in the U.S. and all over a troubled world.

Some 30% of Republican voters want as their president the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice.” About the same percentage of Democrats prefer a 74-year-old Socialist who seems to believe federal revenue is created by pixies.

The British Labour Party just cast its lot with a leader whose choice for finance minister includes among his interests “fomenting the overthrow of capitalism.” A torrent of Syrian refugees has unhinged European liberalism. Islamic State is drowning history itself in blood, while the pope is giving speeches on climate change.

Not least, the future of the slow-growth, anxiety-producing American economy is in the hands of one nice lady named Janet Yellen, who presides over what is literally a central-bank black box. Crazy.

A friend last weekend said he thought the story about the University of New Hampshire’s website publishing a bias-free language guide, which declared that use of the word “American” is “problematic,” was a hoax. Of course, it was real.

Is it trivial of me to conflate campus microaggression theory with Islamic State’s barbarism? I don’t think so. Because it is when people start to conclude that all of this stuff has rolled into a huge, spinning, out-of-control ball of incomprehension that it becomes madness.

American politics among both parties is in a grim temper, and the new estimates of income and poverty for 2014 that the Census Bureau published on Wednesday help explain why. The report is a portrait of economic stagnation.

Real median household income—the exact halfway point of the earnings distribution—was statistically identical to the 2013 median. The $53,657 for 2014 follows two consecutive years of decline in 2011 and 2012 and remains 6.5% lower than the median in 2007. About the only indicator of well being that hasn’t declined in the Obama recovery are measures of income inequality.

These trends would be less worrisome were there more mobility over time, but the Census data suggest that fewer people are moving up the pay ladder compared to earlier periods. Some 57.1% of households were cemented in the same income quintile between 2009 and 2012.

The 2016 presidential race has been notable for its surprises, and Wednesday night’s debate at the Reagan library in California may reshuffle the candidate polling order again. Our guess is that Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio helped themselves the most in a race that will see many more turns before a nominee is chosen.

Ms. Fiorina made it to the big debate stage for the first time and didn’t waste the opportunity. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO showed off her policy chops and skill in delivering a message. She does her homework.

She notably outshone the other two “outsiders” who haven’t held elected office— Donald Trump and Ben Carson. The retired pediatric neurosurgeon can be endearing but he suffered from vagueness and looked smaller than he did in the first debate. Mr. Trump was full of his usual bluster and bragging but seemed out of his depth when the debate turned toward specifics.

The TV replays will showcase Ms. Fiorina’s slyly cutting response to Mr. Trump’s insult about her looks that he later said was really aimed at her “persona.” Ms. Fiorina said, “You know, it’s interesting to me, Mr. Trump said that he heard Mr. Bush very clearly and what Mr. Bush said. I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”

Mr. Trump looked like a fighter stunned by a sharp right hand, which he was.

But the more telling exchange for presidential qualifications concerned Russia’s recent military moves in Syria. Mr. Trump offered his usual fierce generalities, saying, “Syria’s a mess. You look at what’s going on with ISIS in there, now think of this: We’re fighting ISIS. ISIS wants to fight Syria. Why are we fighting ISIS in Syria? Let them fight each other and pick up the remnants.”

He meant that as a criticism of President Obama’s strategy, but letting them fight each other is Mr. Obama’s strategy. Mr. Trump also said “I would talk to him. I would get along with him [ Vladimir Putin], I believe, and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path.” So he’d get along with the Russian unless he didn’t.

Mr. Rubio then gave a far more specific analysis of Vladimir Putin’s strategy: “Well, first of all, I have an understanding of exactly what it is Russia and Putin are doing, and it’s pretty straightforward. He wants to reposition Russia, once again, as a geopolitical force. . . . He’s trying to destroy NATO . . . He is trying to replace us as the most important power broker in the Middle East.” Exactly right.

“Down Under” Australia just suffered an election defeat. Here is an up front comment by Quadrant (Australia’s eminent conservative magazine) contributor Merv Bendle which is totally applicable to our own nation:

“The path forward for conservatives is clear, now that the coup executed by Malcolm Turnbull has eradicated any illusions that the Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott could be an effective bulwark against the evermore intrusive power of the state as it seeks completely to colonize civil society and dominate every aspect of life.”

All of these areas of public policy share one crucial characteristic – they involve the mobilization of state power to impose vast new structures of tightly regulated behaviour upon society that would not otherwise have evolved of their own accord. They also necessitate massive bureaucracies based on the Promethean assumption that the almost infinite intricacies of social, economic, and ecological life can be grasped, modelled, manipulated, and directed by the apparatus of the state …..”

Which of the candidates debating tonight gets this and what corrective suggestions could be offered?

Just weeks ago, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel posed for pictures with anguished Syrian refugees and pledged to take in as many as 500,000 per year. But as Fox News reported, “uneasy critics inside the European power fear the huge influx could not only skew the nation’s demographics in a hurry, but could also include terrorists hiding among the war weary masses…ISIS has already said it planted jihadist fighters among the refugees, and some in Germany wonder why the terrorist army’s claims are not being taken more seriously.”

Now in a complete reversal, Germany has announced it is immediately introducing border controls in the south of the country, as announced Sunday by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

Vox.com reports the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed “urgent security reasons.”

And when you view this clip courtesy of LiveLeak, it all makes perfect sense. Do you want to invite hooligans with sticks, stones and hurling fists into your quiet cul-de-sac?

A Shiite militia has released an ISIS-style video featuring Turkish workers it took hostage. Its message is aimed at Turkey’s Islamist leader Erdogan, who is allegedly an ISIS backer and certainly a backer of assorted Sunni Islamic terror groups.

While Western media sources aren’t listing the identity of the Shiite terror group responsible, Turkish media outlets claim that Iraq raided Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi version of Hezbollah backed by Iran. The raid resulted in a firefight between what’s left of the Iraqi army and Shiite militias.