RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rep-ilhan-omar-likens-israel-to-jim-crow-south/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continued her public campaign against Israel on Twitter Thursday night, comparing the state and its policies to the Jim Crow South of mid 20th century America.

In citing the “millions of people under Israeli control,” liberal activist Max Berger, whom Omar was responding to, was likely referring to the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who are governed by the Palestinian Authority, and, as such, cannot vote in Israeli elections.

Since being elected in November to represent Minnesotans in the House of Representatives, Omar has prioritized the promotion of Palestinian rights in numerous media appearances and public statements. Earlier this week, she told Yahoo News that she “almost chuckles” when she hears Israel referred to as a “democracy” and compared the country to Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

“I mean just our relationship with the Israeli government and the Israeli state. And so when I see Israel institute laws that recognize it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold [Israel] as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if we see that [in] any other society we would criticize it, call it out,” Omar said. “We do that to Iran, we do that to any other place that sort of upholds its religion. And I see that now happening with Saudi Arabia and so I am aggravated, truly, in those contradictions.”

Omar was also forced to apologize earlier this month after initially defending a years-old tweet in which she accused Israel of “hypnotizing the world.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/democrats-will-do-everything-to-stop-donald-trump-except-compromise/

If their headlong lurch to the left costs them their one shot at beating Trump next year, they’ll only have themselves to blame.

Perhaps the most common left-wing critique of Donald Trump is that he represents an extraordinary threat to American democracy. He’s not a normal Republican, or even a normal Republican with a bad Twitter habit; he’s something else entirely. He’s a threat to American norms and values, a mendacious wannabe authoritarian who’s unlocking the darkest forms of white-identity politics and straining the unity of an already polarized nation. He’s the man who could destroy the post-war international order and ultimately bring ruin to the network of alliances and trading relationships that has kept the United States safe and prosperous for generations.

These are desperate times for the nation, Democrats say. This is a moment when patriotic Americans should put aside their differences, rally behind a message of national unity, and defeat Trump to — at the very least — restore basic respect for the rule of law and the American constitutional order. The 40 percent have chosen their man. Now liberals must extend their arms to the 60 percent and sweep Trumpism from the land.

Or not. Judging from the last month, now is the time for Democrats to sprint to the left, countering Trump’s base politics with base politics of their own. In just the last few days we’ve seen Kamala Harris propose the abolition of private health insurance, Elizabeth Warren propose a plainly unconstitutional wealth tax, and Democratic bills in New York, Virginia, and Vermont seeking to expand access to third-trimester abortions — procedures that even a majority of Democrats dislike. At the same time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a 70 percent tax rate on top earners, and Nancy Pelosi has called a border wall an “immorality” — even as Democrats in the past have voted for and funded hundreds of miles of border barriers.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/01/new_jersey_democratic_sen_cory_booker_launches_2020_bid_139348.html

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Friday declared his bid for the presidency in 2020 with a sweeping call to unite a deeply polarized nation around a “common purpose.”

The New Jersey Democrat, who is the second black candidate in a primary field that’s already historically diverse, delivered his message of unity amid an era marked by bitter political division. He announced his run on the first day of Black History Month, underscoring his consequential status as America’s potential second black president after Barack Obama.

“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good-paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame,” Booker said in a video message to supporters, subtly jabbing at President Donald Trump.

“It is not a matter of can we, it’s a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will?” he added. “I believe we do.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/donald-trump-and-the-latino-vote/

Trump would not have to change his policies to capture 40 to 50 percent of the Latino vote (which is quite different from “Latino” spokespeople on television and the Jorge Ramos crowd), as opposed to simply articulating them:

1) The “new” Democratic party not only show signs of a new more insidious anti-Semitism — as we’ve seen from comments by Senator Feinstein, Harris, and Hirono, and the surreal and barbarous statements coming out of Virginia and New York on third-trimester abortion (and near infanticide). But it is now becoming anti-Catholic to a degree not seen in decades in America. Why would a devout Catholic wish to side with such bigotry? Trump is on the right side of the abortion and the religious-discrimination issues.

2) Hispanic unemployment is at record low levels in a growing economy. One can see the realities by simply driving around small towns in Central California where the flurry of activity and demand for labor are unprecedented, and workers have a range of options and leverage not seen in the 21st century. Even slight decreases in border crossings are force multipliers in the empowerment of Mexican-American and other Hispanic citizens in efforts to boost wages and gain options in employment. Trump’s policies did much of that, visible even in highly regulated and less dynamic California. Few middle-class commuters wish to endorse the New Green Deal that would mandate soon ending chain saws, leaf blowers and the workers’ daily commute.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-

Who’s going to stop Donald Trump being re-elected in 2020?That is the big question looming large over America’s political landscape as the clock ticks ever louder on the next election.

Maybe it will be Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose much-awaited report into alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign team and Russia is expected in the near future?

Should Mueller produce real hard evidence directly implicating President Trump, it would be game over for The Donald. But I very much doubt that’s going to happen.

If he had found any, we’d surely know about it faster than a greyhound flies out of a trap.

Maybe it will be old age or ill health?

But I very much doubt that will happen either.

Trump, who will be 74 by the time he faces the voters again, shows no sign of slowing down or losing a single ounce of his combative energy.

Maybe it will be Hillary Clinton, who has spent the past two years seething with indignant fury that she lost and is apparently ‘seriously considering’ running again?

But I am 100% confident that won’t happen. Mainly because Trump would think Thanksgiving had come early.

So who CAN stop Trump?

The pool of Democrat candidates who have so far indicated they will run is distinctly underwhelming.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272696/republicans-preemptive-cringe-bruce-thornton

Recently two events occurred that illustrate the Republican bad habit of ceding to progressives a whole set of questionable assumptions. Whether out of sincere but misguided belief or fear of political cost, this anxious and cringing validation of progressive ideas and the double-standards that follow empowers the Democrats and weakens the GOP.

The most egregious example was the speed at which many nominal conservatives chastised the Kentucky parochial school students who were attacked by an illiberal and racist outfit called the Black Hebrew Israelites, and by an American Indian “activist,” “tribal elder,” and “Vietnam vet” (the last a patent lie and a case of stolen valor). The anti-Trump media, as expected, without waiting for more information savaged the kids for embodying the worst traits of “white supremacism,” “toxic masculinity,” and “racial privilege.” One CNN Minister of Propaganda delighted in pointed out one kid’s “punchable face.” This was the same young man who stoically endured a deranged grown-up banging a drum in his face while the Black Hebrews rained down vile epithets on him.

The left’s reaction should surprise no one familiar with its disregard for fact and equal justice, and its penchant for bullying the weak. More disgusting were the equally precipitate and bullying comments from some on the right. The NeverTrumpers at National Review beclowned themselves with their usual moral preening and preemptive cringing. One editorial subaltern tweeted of the students, “they might as well have just spit on the cross and got it over with.” At least the putative conservatives had the decency to be embarrassed, apologizing and removing their tweets and articles.

Those gestures, however, don’t explain the initial impulse to attack, before all the facts were in, sixteen-year-old Catholic kids attending the March for Life rally against abortion, a cohort likely to become readers of National Review. Given that the bell of the attackers’ calumny cannot be unrung, it smacks of opportunism to apologize now, when the pundits never should have hastened to condemn the kids on such scant and subjective evidence in the first place.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-howard-schultz-11548893911

The way progressives are denouncing Howard Schultz, you’d think he is Donald Trump’s first cousin. The former Starbucks CEO said Sunday he might run for President as an independent in 2020, and Democrats have since been shrieking like teenagers at a horror movie. They seem to fear a policy debate, which is exactly why a Schultz candidacy could be good for the country, including Democrats.

Senator Elizabeth Warren wasted no time on Twitter deriding “billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else.” The Democratic pundit class, which means nearly every pundit, rushed to say Mr. Schultz should stick to grande cappucinos and leave politics to the professionals who . . . lost to Mr. Trump.

They’re trying to bully Mr. Schultz out of running, but along the way they’re making the case for why he should. Take economics, where Ms. Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris and other Democrats wants Americans to shut up and jump on their bullet train to Bernie Sanders’ utopia. On policy Mr. Schultz is closer to a John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton Democrat.

He grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, worked in sales at Xerox and built his global coffee company from next to nothing. “I thought that was the American dream, the aspiration of America,” he said this week. “You’re going to criticize me for being successful when in my company over the last 30 years, the only company in America that gave comprehensive health insurance, equity in the form of stock options, and free college tuition?”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/kamala-harris-health-care-plan-elimination/

Kamala Harris has a big idea for your health-care plan: elimination.

The early contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are working feverishly to out-radical each other. Senator Elizabeth Warren has come out with a confiscatory wealth tax that in practice proved too oppressive for Sweden and Denmark, both of which abolished theirs years ago. Harris, not wanting to be outflanked on her left, has now called for the abolition of private health insurance, a proposal that would go well beyond even the practice in single-payer systems such as those of the United Kingdom and Canada.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her whether under her “Medicare for All” proposal people would be permitted to keep their insurance if they like it. Harris, unlike Barack Obama, offered no such concession. Instead, she offered this: “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

Move on to what?

Harris argued that under her system patients would be liberated from having third parties “give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.” That has not, to say the least, been the experience under government-monopoly health-care systems in real-world practice. In reality, those systems are characterized by bureaucracy, delays, and seemingly arbitrary decisions enforced by the state. There is plenty to criticize about the U.S. health-insurance and health-care businesses, which remain much in need of reform, but the evidence of history strongly suggests that the imposition of a new federal bureaucracy is not the most convenient means of reducing paperwork and delay.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272722/stacey-abrams-odd-choice-deliver-state-union-daniel-greenfield

After the disastrous response to Trump’s wall speech, it’s understandable that the Dems don’t want to bring Schumer and Pelosi back to counter President Trump’s State of the Union address. And a lot of their top talent is pondering running in 2020.

So they can’t play favorites.

But Stacey Abrams has also been flirting with running, she’s a campaign loser and she’s a terrible public speaker. The Dems could have picked Hakeem Jeffries, or any one of a dozen other Dems in the national or state leadership who aren’t thinking of running.

And who would actually leave viewers with a positive impression.

Picking Abrams is meant to boost her comeback campaign, but at the cost of the Dem brand.

I know the pre-written media headlines about Abrams “destroying” Trump with lines carefully scripted for her by guys who charge you $50K just to hear them sneeze will be given added spice by the identity politics here, and the consultants have told the Dems that getting black women out to vote is the key to victory, but she’s still a terrible choice.

But at least she probably isn’t running in 2020. It’s hard to find a Dem who isn’t.