RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/pelosis-impeachment-blunder/

Her leverage play turns out to have been an embarrassing mistake.

We are in the midst of an imaginary impeachment standoff between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. “Both have drawn firm lines in the sand. Someone’s got to give,” one reporter recently declared.

There is, of course, nothing to “give.” Pelosi has no standing to dictate the terms of a Senate trial; no constitutional right or political leverage. Why she has put herself in a position that will ultimately end, one way or another, with her surrendering to McConnell is perplexing.

A new piece in Time magazine does shed some light on the thought process behind Pelosi’s decision to refuse to hand over articles of impeachment to a Senate whose majority doesn’t want them. One of the most interesting nuggets in the piece isn’t that Pelosi — portrayed as courageous risk-taker — had gotten the bright idea from CNN; it’s that she specifically got it from noted felon John Dean, Nixon’s former White House lawyer. Now, Dean is often portrayed as a patriotic, whistleblowing impeachment expert — which is true insofar as he planned the Watergate coverup, and then informed on everyone whom he conspired with after they were caught. His real expertise is cashing in on criminality for the past 50 years (I wrote about Dean’s slimy past here).

Surely Pelosi, blessed with preternatural political instincts, wouldn’t rely on Dean’s advice? Surely Pelosi wasn’t browbeaten into doing this by podcast bros and talking heads on America’s least popular major cable-news network?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/tom-cotton-on-anti-semitism/?utm_medium=push_notificaions&utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=automated

On January 9, Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech on the floor of the United States Senate about the shocking rise of anti-Semitic crimes in and around New York City. Everyone should read it. Here it is:

This holiday season, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism cast a shadow over New York City during Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. The New York Police Department recorded at least nine separate attacks against Jews—more than one attack for each day of Hanukkah. New attacks are reported seemingly on a daily basis.

In Crown Heights, site of the deadly anti-Semitic riots incited by Al Sharpton in 1991, a group of men beat up an Orthodox Jew and attacked another with a chair.

In Williamsburg, another group terrorized an elderly Jewish man on the street. “Jew, Hitler burned you,” one of the criminals reportedly said. “I’ll shoot you.”

And just outside the city, in Rockland County, a man with a machete stormed a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home and injured five worshippers, leaving two in critical condition. The family of one victim, Josef Neumann, says he may never wake up from his coma.

These heinous attacks are part of a growing storm of anti-Semitism that has made Jewish Americans fearful to worship and walk the streets in their own communities. They come in the wake of the deadly rampage at a kosher market in Jersey City that left four innocent people dead, including a police detective. And of course, they come in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in our nation’s history: the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist.

According to the FBI, our country suffered a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes between 2014 and 2018. According to the New York Police Department, the city suffered a 26 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year alone. That increase is alarming enough. So is the fact that most hate crimes reported in New York are crimes against Jews. And while some of the increase is due to better reporting, much of it is not. Jewish Americans bear witness to this harsh reality.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/ilhan_omars_antics_now_include_claiming_she_cant_hear_war_talk_because_of_ptsd.html

President Trump’s decision to kill the terrorist Qassem Soleimani reveals how alienated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is from America.  Normally, a young woman who was welcomed into this country as a refugee and then ascended to one of the highest offices in the land might show some gratitude for its stand against the same kind of fanaticism that drove her out of her homeland.  Not Omar, though.  She has nothing but disdain.

Omar’s latest anti-American behavior occurred during a press conference on Wednesday, when Omar and Rashida Tlaib were seen laughing and joking as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) somberly discussed American casualties in the Iraq War.  It was disconcerting to watch Lee state, “We left four thousand plus, maybe even forty four hundred dead, and over sixty thousand who came back injured in some form, and the war never ended” while Omar giggled, then turned to Tlaib, and shared a joke with her:

When it was Omar’s turn at the microphone during the same press conference, she asserted that her responses to President Trump’s strike against Soleimani had triggered her PTSD:

I feel ill a little bit because of everything that is taking place. And I think every time I about … I hear of conversations around war, I find myself being stricken with PTSD. And I find peace knowing that I serve with great activists for peace and people who have shown courage against war.

https://spectator.us/elimination-qasem-soleimani-farewell-letter/

In July 55 BC, in the midst of his campaigns to civilize Gaul, Julius Caesar was troubled by the Germans. They would cross the Rhine, wreak havoc, and then disappear back across the mighty river, whose depth and swift currents made the Germans regard it as an impregnable barrier.

To teach them that it wasn’t, Caesar had his engineers construct a bridge across the Rhine. As Caesar recounts in Book IV of his commentaries on the Gallic War, they did this in an astonishing 10 days. Caesar and his troops crossed over, stayed for a few days in German territory, ‘burned all their villages and other buildings, and cut down the grain in their fields’. They then crossed back over and destroyed the bridge.

The point, which was not lost on the Germans, was that the Romans could go anywhere they wanted, whenever they wanted, and there was nothing the Germans could do about it.

Last week, Donald Trump demonstrated something similar to the Iranian mullahs when he introduced Qasem Soleimani to the payload of a couple of MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Americans, they now know, can go anywhere, anytime, and can pick off anyone they like with pinpoint precision. At 1:00 a.m. Baghdad time on January 3, Soleimani is sharing a latte with his pal Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, presumably dreaming about the American diplomats they are going to kill. 1:01 a.m., poof! No more bad guys.