RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/protesters-clearing-path-trump-kenosha-black-lives-matter/

‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protesters] know that this officer has been fired.’ Thus spoke Whitney Cabal, a leader of the Kenosha chapter of Black Lives Matter, in response to the latest police shooting in Wisconsin. The use of the passive in that sentence is revealing.

As Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out (see ‘The knife went in’) it is common for people to assign motive to inanimate objects when they are loth to admit to being in the wrong. I suspect that the suitably named Ms Cabal knows that the state of Wisconsin did not auto-combust this week, as Krook does at the end of Bleak House. True, there was first a police shooting and arrest. But someone must then have put a match to the place. The American public, press and politicians know that. But any willingness to say it appears now to fall along strictly party-political lines.

It is one of the most striking things about the violence and unrest that have followed the killing of George Floyd. Not the violence, but the increasingly ostentatious desire of a portion of the population to pretend they do not see it. Some friends in New York tell me of gang robberies at restaurants in broad daylight, of lootings, shootings and boarded-up shops. ‘Peaceful demonstrations’, I am assured by other friends, who identify as ‘liberals’ though have mysteriously stayed away from the city of late.

The same story is rolling out across America. The left says that there are nightly protests for ‘social justice’. When these protests involve mass lootings, such as those in Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, they are claimed (if acknowledged at all) to be the actions of a tiny fringe. Such dogged blindness has a clear political and cultural purpose. The political purpose is a desire to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump. The wider justification would appear to be a belief that ‘anti-racism’ is such an important omelette of a cause that a few broken eggs — or cities — is a price worth paying.

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/a-trump-in-full/

President Trump accepted the Republican nomination Thursday night with his family flanking him on a dais constructed atop the South Lawn of the White House. His speech hit all the marks of Trump-ism. He said Joe Biden was inept and a vehicle for the socialist left, described how he’s fulfilled the MAGA agenda, and reasserted his opposition to political correctness. “We are not a nation of timid spirits,” he said. “We are a nation of fierce, proud, and independent patriots.”

The setting of the convention was another reminder of how unusual the Trump era has been. Donald Trump appeared out of nowhere when he came down the escalator in June 2015. Since that moment, he has been the indefatigable element of American (and world) politics. There is no getting around him. We have been living in a world in which Donald Trump defines media coverage of his candidacy and administration, reshapes the Republican party, and tugs the government of the United States fitfully and persistently in a national populist direction. Then the coronavirus struck, and the oddities that have defined American life for the last half decade metastasized. And so we were left with a sitting president delivering a convention address from the White House for the first time since 1940.

Donald Trump narrowly won the presidency four years ago because large swathes of America decided that the political class had failed them. He represented an anti-politics, a rejection of the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, immigration, and trade that had influenced public policy since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Trump defied the consensus, and he also flouted every single norm that has governed presidential decorum since at least World War II. As every pundit (including me) assailed his character and his methods, a plurality of Republican and then American voters gave him their assent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-disruption-11598570719?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

When Donald Trump won the Presidency four years ago, half of America gnashed its teeth or cried and even supporters who cheered weren’t sure what to expect. Four years later our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped. Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet.

We realize that even considering the Trump Presidency in these conventional terms is offensive to some readers. Don’t we get that he’s a would-be authoritarian, a Russian plant, or at least so deeply flawed as a human being that he can’t be trusted with power? Yet our democracy survives, and the Constitution’s checks and balances are intact. Americans who heard him ask for a second term Thursday night were trying to make sense of what has been a raucous and disruptive Presidency.**

This week’s virtual GOP convention has spent hours educating voters about Trump Administration successes, and many are real, starting with the pre-Covid-19 economy that we examined this week. The political irony is that this success was due to Mr. Trump’s adoption of conventional GOP economics, not his trade or immigration agenda.

https://spectator.us/two-conventions-saying-dnc-rnc/

What’s the bottom line, so far?
 
Democrats think they will win by making the race a referendum on Donald Trump (more the person than the policies, though they hate both). They are effectively trying to run Joe Biden as a generic Democrat.
 
Republicans think the path to victory is to make the race a choice, Trump versus Biden, and to say Biden is unable or unwilling to stop the far-left in his party. Drawing a sharp contrast between the two parties was the whole point of Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to conclude the convention’s third night. For the most part, though, Republicans focused on the positive case for Trump, not the negative one for Biden. They featured lots of everyday Americans who said they had been helped by Trump’s policies, sometimes adding that he had reached out to them personally.
 
The Democrats made a very strong negative case, devoting almost their entire convention to attacks on Trump, leavened by their depiction of Joe Biden as a genuinely decent guy. Their policies got very little attention.
 
The parties did agree on one thing: the differences between them are stark. Both make a convincing case that this is the most consequential election in decades.
 

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/26/5-things-to-know-about-night-3-of-the-republican-national-convention-heroes-night-n851132

I keep thinking “it can’t get better than this,” but the Republican National Convention (RNC) keeps proving me wrong. The RNC kicked off with Tim Scott, Vernon Jones, and Nikki Haley rebutting the Left’s disgusting race rhetoric and Trump moderating a historic panel of freed hostages. Night 2 featured a naturalization ceremony, stories of comeback, Daniel Cameron, and our fabulous first lady.

Yet Wednesday brought even more inspiring moments: a mom who refused to abort her Down syndrome son, but gave him a good education; a disabled 25-year-old running for Congress; a Chinese freedom fighter condemning the Chinese Communist Party; and more.

There’s still one more night left, and it will feature President Donald Trump himself.

Without further ado, here are five things to know about night 3 of the RNC.

1. The powerful women of the Republican Party

One amazing woman after another spoke at the RNC Wednesday night. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) gave a powerful speech about heroes and opposing the mob. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) gave a powerful warning about the radical Left. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) extolled the American dream. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened up about her double mastectomy. Second Lady Karen Pence recalled the Nineteenth Amendment.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/27/lib-media-ignores-biggest-convention-story-trumps-aggressive-outreach-to-black-voters/

If Kim Klacik were a Democrat, she would be the talk of the town. An inspiring, energetic, fresh face on the political scene who has produced one of the best political ads in memory. Instead, her talk at the Republican convention was ignored by the press, which thought the biggest story coming out of the GOP meeting was that biased “fact checkers” (who were apparently on a week-long vacation during the Democrats’ convention) were able to come up with a long list of things they could complain about.

There’s a good reason for the media to ignore Klacik. Her message. It’s simple and direct: “Joe Biden believes we can’t think for ourselves, that the color of someone’s skin dictates their political views. We’re not buying the lies anymore.” 

In her campaign ad, she is seen walking through burned out, decrepit Baltimore neighborhoods while reminding viewers that Democrats have run the city for five decades.

Other minority speakers echoed this message in the first two nights of the convention — that Democrats don’t care about black people, just their votes. Several quoted Biden’s comments about blacks being monolithic and how they “ain’t black” if they support Trump. They talked about Trump’s justice reform bill and his support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities — something few Americans probably know anything about.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/voter-fraud-evidence-deborah-weiss/

I am sick and tired of the purportedly objective media quoting President Trump and injecting “without evidence,” especially when ample evidence exists. Such is the case with the President’s claims of voter fraud and the potential catastrophe that will ensue if we go to unsolicited mail-in ballots for the upcoming November election.

Years ago, I worked on the congressional committee which deals with contested elections. Our committee found extensive voter fraud in examining the Dornan-Sanchez election. That was just in California, not exploring other states at the time. Long before the Read ID Act and before the onslaught of “systemic racism” accusations, we introduced a bill to require voter ID to ensure that citizens’ votes would not be diluted or negated by the votes of those voting illegally. Even then in the 90’s, Republicans proposing this legislation were called racist and told we hated Hispanics (since that constituted the bulk of the illegal votes in California at the time). Actually, the real problem was that Democrats loved illegal Hispanics and others who voted illegally, primarily because they knew most voted Democrat to get free benefits.

I want to point out, however, that actual illegal voting or voter fraud is just one problem with mail-in voting. When President Trump refers to voter fraud, I think he is also talking in general terms about all the things that can go wrong with a mail-in election, some of which are not fraud, but would likely still result in problems that can drastically skew accurate election results.

First, actual voter fraud includes: people who vote in more than one state or county (because when they move they do not remove themselves the voter rolls of the place they left and then illegally vote more than once); people who have died are not always purged from voter rolls and yet somehow their votes are cast; and sometimes people who are not citizens vote. In some “liberal” localities, Democrats have even passed legislation allowing permanent residents or illegal immigrants to vote in local elections. Additionally, when there is no requirement to prove you are who you say you are, anyone can vote, and it’s easier to wrongfully vote in someone else’s name. Thus, lax or no requirements for addresses and proof of citizenship result can result in voter fraud.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/pence-delivers-knock-out-acceptance-speech-joseph-klein-0/

The theme for the third night of the Republican National Convention was “Land of Heroes,” focusing on heroism in the military, law enforcement and the front lines of first responders. The night conveyed a message of freedom in America that past generations have fought for and that is our task today to preserve with individual acts of service and heroism. And the contrast was made vividly clear between today’s Republican Party as the party that honors and seeks to preserve America’s core values of individual life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with today’s Democratic Party, which has turned into an attack machine against law enforcement and champion of government control over peoples’ lives.

The man of the hour, Vice President Mike Pence, spoke live from Fort McHenry, the site of the War of 1812 battle that inspired the writing of our national anthem. He delivered an inspiring speech that was also blistering in its criticism of Joe Biden and his leftist Democratic Party. After the vice president concluded his speech, President Trump joined him on stage as the national anthem was sung and Old Glory flew above.

Vice President Pence said that the 2020 election was a choice of “whether America remains America.” He portrayed the difference between the agendas of the two parties as one between the Republican Party’s agenda of freedom and today’s Democratic Party’s agenda of government control. “We stand at a crossroads, America,” Pence said. “President Trump has set our nation on a path of freedom and opportunity. Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.” Biden is “nothing more than a Trojan horse for the radical left,” Pence added.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/democrats_panic_as_voters_turn_away_from_the_lefts_unending_violence.html

For months now, the Democrat-controlled mainstream media has cheered on the violence that followed George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose while in police custody. In Democrat-run cities across American, mayors sympathized with the mobs on the streets. They would not act to stem the violence that has destroyed billions of dollars in public and private property and claimed several lives. Higher up the political chain, Democrat politicians refused to condemn the violence, instead blaming federal officers and (of course) President Trump.

Suddenly, though, there’s a change in the air. With Trump getting a bounce following the Democrat convention and getting an even greater bounce as the Republican convention plays out, Democrats in the media and elsewhere have realized that the average American is repelled, rather than enchanted, by a violent, bloody revolution in America’s streets.