RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/31/hows-life-in-obamas-fundamentally-transformed-america-working-out-for-you-so-far/

It should be painfully obvious to everyone by now that we are living in the fast-hardening cement of what Barack Obama promised to wildly cheering crowds on the campaign trail in 2008—”a fundamental transformation of America.”

Anyone who can remember back to the decades before the Obama presidency will recall a country committed to fairness and common sense: judging a person based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; welcoming a person who came lawfully into this country who applied for citizenship through traditionally prescribed means; never giving a second thought about girls’ and women’s sports being reserved only for a person born female and without a speck of steroids, let alone testosterone, in their bodies; expecting that immensely immature men dressed as fat-slob, over-face-painted, faux women would remain hidden inside “special” bars and clubs and not held up as twerking examples to kindergarten children; acknowledging unequivocally that Marxism was a bad idea and not a glorified ideal; realizing that only a tyrant would actually jail their political opponents for simply questioning highly-suspicious presidential election results; and, generally, in a more fair-minded time: no one even considered ever gleefully calling “evil good and good evil.”

This, of course, is but a very short list of the slop that is being shoveled on a daily basis down the throats of ordinary, common-sense Americans. (We will leave it to the reader to shout out a few dozen more.)

All of this slow-boiling of the pot, with the American-citizen frog paddling lethargically within, began with the nomination of Barack Obama.

People so desperately wanted what Obama was peddling, “Hope and Change,” that they inserted into that second word whatever it was their hearts desired most. And certainly the color of the man’s skin was the huge selling point. Sure, the candidate had no track record, and, let’s face it, had he been white, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democrats’ candidate that election season. But the biracial aspect was seen, perhaps even symbolically, as a way of finally unifying this country after so much racial tension throughout the previous decades.

Many conservatives like to push back on the charge that America is “systemically racist” by pointing to the 2008 election. The basis of their argument: “Would a racist nation vote a black man into office?”

However, isn’t it more accurate to say that voting for someone based on their skin color is also racist? Racism goes both ways. That’s why anyone who says that Blacks cannot be racist is making a racist statement.

“It’s not about skin,” a friend once told me, “it’s about sin.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-black-pastors-oppose-israel-7d131f24?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

More than 1,000 black pastors are pressing President Biden to restrain Israel in its war with Hamas and threatening that if he doesn’t do so, it will cost him black support in November. “We see them as a part of us,” the Rev. Cynthia Hale of Decatur, Ga., told the

New York Times

, referring to Palestinians. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.” Barbara Williams-Skinner of the National African American Clergy Network said: “Black clergy have seen war, militarism, poverty and racism all connected.”

Yet their focus on the Middle East is perplexing. “The Israel-Gaza war, unlike Iran and Afghanistan, has evoked the kind of deep-seated angst among black people that I have not seen since the civil-rights movement,” Ms. Williams-Skinner said. Why? The world is filled with victims of oppression—the Uyghurs of China, the Kurds of Iraq, the Ukrainians. The black citizens of Sudan have been subjected to mass killing and enslavement at the hands of Arabs. What makes the Palestinians more worthy of sympathy—especially since, unlike these other groups, they have turned down numerous offers of statehood and have made terrorism their tactic of choice?

Perhaps it is that their antagonists are Jews. In a 1992 article, the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. pondered the causes of rising antisemitism in the black community. He considered the influence of “Christian anti-Semitism, given the historic importance of Christianity in the black community.” But he laid the primary blame on black demagogues who were vying for leadership in the new “Afrocentric” movement.

Mr. Gates noted that many Jews were surprised by the “recrudescence of black anti-Semitism, in view of the historic alliance between the two groups.” He cited the “brutal truth” that the “new anti-Semitism arises not in spite of the black-Jewish alliance, but because of it.” The alliance had been formed by a previous generation of black ministers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., who sought integration. The new generation of Afrocentric leaders, including pastors, needed to keep blacks isolated to establish their own power.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brandon-johnson-chicago-cease-fire-resolution-gaza-israel-2e7cd658?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote. Skeptics wonder when the mayor will support a cease-fire on the West Side.

The Council resolution calls for a “permanent ceasefire to end the ongoing violence in Gaza . . . for humanitarian assistance including medicine, food and water, to be sent into the impacted region; and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

In a statement last week, Mr. Johnson said he supports a cease-fire in Gaza because “the killing has to stop” and because he “want(s) to save lives.” He cited numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that the war has killed some 25,000 Palestinians.

The resolution created a flag-waving ruckus in Chicago City Hall Tuesday but has zero effect on Israel or Hamas. Its more proximate effect is to endear Mr. Johnson to the left and put Chicago in the same category as cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Atlanta and Detroit that have also aligned themselves with the Palestinian cause.

https://victorhanson.com/trump-has-reason-to-rage-but-needs-to-stay-calm-and-get-even-rather-than-mad/

Donald Trump gave one of his best and most conciliatory speeches of his political career after his win in the recent Iowa primaries—that might explain why the media would not cover it. Later, to answer an ad hoc ambush reporter’s question whether he would hold grudges, he emphatically said he did not.

Yet after his win in New Hampshire, Trump went ballistic at Nikki Haley’s earlier charges that he, rather than Joe Biden, was cognitively challenged, past his prime, and a perennial loser of popular votes.

In response, Trump shed his short-lived Iowa temperance. He went wholehog after Haley’s dress and her affectations and trashed her character. He tweeted that she was a “birdbrain,” and on and on.

For six years, observers have noted the disconnect between Trump’s stellar record of governance, his occasional sense of humor and even self-criticism—and his ad hominem venom that often turns off the 3-7 percent of the electorate in the suburbs who otherwise might vote for him.

Reasonable calls to tone it down by pundits, aides, and friends do not work with Trump, and perhaps for several understandable reasons.

One, Trump is reactive in his “they started it, I finish it” mode. His theory of deterrence is to be disproportionate in retort to eliminate future preemptive attacks. Almost all of Trump’s crudeness was in disproportionate response, sometimes even to minor offenses.

In such a world of Trump deterrence, if you do not relish a crude Trump, then don’t first talk about cutting off his head, blowing him up, stabbing him, shooting him, or lighting him on fire, or don’t spread lies like “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” or that the influence-selling Biden consortium was innocent of shaking down foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into the clan’s coffers.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/31/economic-shock-2-3-of-voters-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-under-biden-ii-tipp-poll/

Democratic politicians seem befuddled by the general lack of respect for what they believe are the accomplishments of Bidenomics. But they shouldn’t be. Because, despite some rebound in the economy since the COVID shutdown, Americans continue to struggle.

While the U.S. remains a wealthy country compared to others, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are “living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ these days” in the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, conducted from Jan. 3-5 from among 1,401 registered voters. The poll has a +/-2.6 percentage point margin of error.

This shocking result comes as some on Wall Street and many politicians applaud recent data showing solid growth in the fourth quarter, along with a slowing rate of inflation.

What’s equally surprising is that the public’s concern is bipartisan, with 63% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans, and 62% of independents saying they’re just scraping by each payday.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/proportionality-again/

You could set your watch by it. Whenever there is an atrocious attack on the United States or Israel, if transnational progressives are not subjecting us to the “escalation” drivel, they are subjecting us to the “proportionality” drivel.

For about the millionth time, the law-of-war concept of proportionality does not hold that a response to an attack has to be on the same scale as the attack itself. Several Biden supporters are making that case regarding Iran’s killing and wounding of our troops in Jordan (otherwise, you see, there could be . . . escalation). Think how absurd that is: A rabid enemy aggressor gets both to attack you first and to dictate the scope of your response.

That, of course, is not how proportionality works.

The driving question in a proportionality calculation is: What is the military objective? If that objective is legitimate (which, under the United States Constitution, we get to decide for ourselves), then the use of force must be reasonably proportionate to what is required to achieve the objective. If the objective is to end or drastically diminish the aggression of Iran and its proxy forces, then a proportionate use of force would be whatever is necessary to break the enemy’s will to continue (and even escalate) that aggression.

In April 1988, after Iran mined the Persian Gulf to paralyze commerce and security traffic, one of these mines detonated and nearly sank the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a guided-missile frigate, as it was escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers. President Reagan responded with what became known as Operation Praying Mantis, combined surface-ship and air attacks that destroyed much of Iran’s navy. As described by retired U.S. Navy captain William Luti in a Christmas Day Wall Street Journal op-ed, the operation remains a case study in effective deterrence.

That operation was textbook proportionality.