RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-impeachment-dilemma-11558651938

It wasn’t with a heavy heart that Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer on Tuesday endorsed initiating formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. And it was with unvoiced alarm that his fellow Virginia Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger ran from the impeachment question the same day.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a wicked impeachment dilemma, and Virginia captures it perfectly. It’s been one month since Congress got its hands on the Mueller report, and Mrs. Pelosi has spent that time scrambling to balance competing demands in her caucus. Her approach—call it pseudo-impeachment—has involved accusing the president of all things impeachable (to appease the left) while not engaging in a real impeachment process (to appease moderates). That strategy is now hitting a wall.

The progressives in her party are lining up to demand an impeachment spectacle. They hail from uber-liberal districts, their constituents want Trump’s scalp, and they fear inaction will earn them a primary challenge. Even Mrs. Pelosi’s wingmen—those who’ve had her fake-impeachment back—are starting to break. The Washington Post reports that Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is arguing for a formal impeachment inquiry, as are “five members of Pelosi’s leadership team.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.theepochtimes.com/democratic-rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tackles-cauliflower-in-green-new-deal_2932099.html

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has accused the humble cauliflower of representing “colonial” views and said she believes it should stop being planted in community gardens as part of her Green New Deal proposal to prevent what she calls “environmental catastrophe and [to] heal systemic inequality.”

“When someone says it is ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, maybe cauliflower or something, what you are doing is taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram video that has since been removed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joins-the-war-on-cauliflower/

A few weeks ago, I noted that Louisiana’s state legislature is contemplating legislation that would bar makers of cauliflower rice from labeling their product “rice,” contending that consumers will get confused. Instead, the rice growers want the product to be labeled . . . “riced cauliflower.”

But Louisiana isn’t the only spot where cauliflower is under fire. In a stream-of-consciousness discussion of composting, the Green New Deal, and community gardens, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamented cauliflower as symbol of colonialism.

“Looks like they’ve got composting going on, which is so awesome, too, because composting is really hard to do in a neighborhood like this. We just don’t have the pick ups and the ease of it that a lot of other communities have. So that’s really how you do it, right, that is such a core component of the Green New Deal, is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context. And it’s an area that I — we get the most pushback on, because people say, like, why do you need to do that? That’s too hard. But when you really think about it, when someone says that it’s too hard to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements, because they come with the colonial lens on them. And it should be no surprise that sometimes a lot of these projects don’t work out occasionally because our communities are naturally attuned to live in an environmentally conscious way.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/stacey-abrams-identity-politics-is-exactly-who-we-are-and-exactly-how-we-won/

“For those of us who still reside on planet Earth, this sort of delusional nonsense is bewildering. We can’t figure out what this loon is babbling about. She insists she won an election, despite all evidence to the contrary. ”

Here’s a rule of thumb I stumbled upon years ago, and it remains true more often than not: Liberals want conservatives to shut up, and conservatives want liberals to keep talking. There are exceptions, of course — the Trumpkin wing of the GOP would like nothing more than to silence anyone, liberal or not, who criticizes their liege — but it tends to be the case. The more libs talk, the better it is for the rest of us. And if you want to know why, just listen to the Democratic Party’s latest superheroine, Stacey Abrams.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Wednesday urged Democrats to embrace identity politics, at a time when the issue has become a source of debate within the party…
“The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the past 10 years and it’s been used as a dog whistle to say we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the voices coming into progress,” Abrams said. “I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are and exactly how we won.”

If you don’t believe her, just look at the results. She’s the rightful governor of Georgia, there’s a unicorn in every garage and free candy in every tummy, and the Democrats are doing just great.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/22/democratic-establishment-wont-stand-partys-a

Democratic leaders seem to have surmised that to keep together a party splitting both generationally and ideologically, they had to either court the radicals or risk early retirement.

Perhaps the most significant long-term development taking place in the Democratic Party is its surrender to the party’s Blame America First wing. One of many indications of this is House Democratic leadership’s ardent defense of its virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and fundamentally anti-American and anti-Western colleagues.

The Democrat establishment’s cave began when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chastised Rep. Ilhan Omar for her anti-Semitic comments, only to then cravenly acquiesce to party progressives by passing a House resolution that refused to condemn Omar by name, and refused to solely condemn Omar’s offending anti-Semitic rhetoric. It accelerated with the party’s attack on critics of Omar’s comments seemingly trivializing the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Then, in the wake of Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s feckless, supportive responses for Rep. Rashida Tlaib following the firestorm she created with her historically illiterate, Hamas-ian hagiographyof Israel’s founding, the Holocaust, and the Arabs’ role in relation to both, the cave to the Blame America Firsters appears to be complete.

The Democrat Old Guard will no longer engage in even muted criticism of its Party’s provocative Young Turks. Rather, it will wholeheartedly defend the provocateurs and vociferously condemn their condemners

The pertinent question few are asking is, “Why?” Assuming the Democratic leadership is driven above all else by power, I suggest three primary reasons for this shameful shift.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-running-for-president-crowded-field/

Twenty or so are going to end this presidential-election cycle deeply disappointed.

Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low expectations get to enjoy a form of moral victory. (Ben Carson and Rick Perry might be happy how the 2016 cycle ended, with both taking roles in Trump’s cabinet. Bernie Sanders might be, too.) But running for president and flopping is a deep disappointment, and while the occasional figure can emerge from a failed bid to move on to different victories — Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole became senators, Jerry Brown became governor again, Howard Dean became chair of the Democratic National Committee — a lot of failed presidential candidates fade away into the private sector and obscurity beyond occasional cable-news appearances: Bill Bradley, Tommy Thompson, Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt, Alan Keyes, Bob Graham, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Michele Bachmann.

The 2020 Democratic primary is going to end with about 23 campaigns falling short of actual victory and any moral victories. Perhaps two candidates will end up in a unity ticket, and perhaps one or two will have set themselves up for another run for another office someday. But the coming year will bring a lot of anticlimax, frustration, and disillusionment for a lot of once-promising figures in the party.

Here are the 24 Democratic presidential candidates, more or less in order of their position, although outside the top four or five, the ranking barely matters.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/21/kamalas-contradictions/

Kamala Harris, the junior U.S. senator from California who is battling among some two-dozen other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, didn’t have much of a career before 1994. That was the year she became the new “steady” of California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a man who is a full 30 years her senior. In a process of poontronage, Brown appointed Harris to lucrative sinecures in state government and raised money for her successful run for San Francisco district attorney.

Harris went on to win election as state attorney general in 2010, even though the Sacramento Bee endorsed her Republican rival, Steve Cooley. (So much for the power of endorsements!) In 2016, Brown urged former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to drop out of the U.S. Senate race, and his former steady went on to win the November election handily. Harris now wants to be president, but she is hardly the only Willie Brown understudy on the rise.

In 1995, a year after he met Harris, Brown encountered fundraiser Carolyn Carpeneti, an elegant blond of 32, and the two became romantically involved. In fact, the pair had a daughter in 2001, when Carpeneti was 38 and Brown 67. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted in 2003, “people familiar with her career—political professionals, city officials, her ex-husband—say Carpeneti’s success is rooted in her relationship with Brown.”

Over a five-year period, groups controlled by Brown paid $2.3 million to Carpeneti, recently granted a sweetheart no-bid deal to recruit for California’s online college project. As Dan Morain noted in CALmatters, the person who selected Carpeneti, Heather Hiles, “is connected to San Francisco politics, having overseen communications for Gov. Gavin Newsom while he was running to succeed Brown as mayor of San Francisco in 2003.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/21/democrats-bear-hug-socialism-while-biden-tries-to-win-as-a-centrist/

Joe Biden is trying to capture his party’s nomination by running as a centrist, and early polls seem to suggest that it’s working. But,
in his run for the presidency, he will face one formidable opponent — his own party.

A new Gallup Poll finds that a shockingly high 70% of Democrats say that socialism is “a good thing.” When Gallup asked about socialism just one year ago, 57% said they have a positive view of socialism. And last year’s poll was the first to find majority support for socialism among Democrats, according to Gallup’s Frank Newport.

Half of Democrats now say that government should be “primarily responsible” for the overall economy. Seventy percent say it should be primarily responsible for health care. Nearly two–thirds want higher education to be primarily the responsibility of the government.

In all of these views, Democrats are far outside the mainstream.

Support for socialism collapses outside the Democratic party bubble. Among independents, 45% think it’s a good idea, and for Republicans, it’s 13%. The only age group that embraces socialism is young people (58% of those in the 18-34 age bracket) who are too uneducated or naïve to know what socialism actually means.

When it comes to the government being responsible for the overall economy, health care, and higher education, Democrats are similarly in far left field. Just 35% of independents think government should be primarily responsible for the economy, 47% for health care, and 40% for higher education.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/20/michigans-amash-lets-the-stupid-be-the-enemy-of-the-good/

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Amash declared that “Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

In opining that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, Amash is all alone among GOP members of Congress, disgracefully echoing the very worst, most socialistic Democrats. And it gets worse, with Amash accusing Attorney General William Barr of lying to protect the President.

It’s ironic in the extreme for someone who fancies himself a purist libertarian, with an absolutist interpretation of First Amendment freedom of speech, to call a distinguished, two-time AG’s considered opinions lies, simply because it suits his purposes to disagree.

So absolutist is Amash on speech that shortly after Trump’s election he couldn’t restrain himself from responding to the President-elect’s tweet condemning flag burning. “Nobody should burn the American flag,” Amash wrote, repeating Trump’s words exactly, then adding: “but our Constitution secures our right to do so. No president is allowed to burn the First Amendment.”

The ratifiers of the Bill of Rights in 1791 would have held open the door of the prison cell as law enforcement incarcerated someone desecrating Old Glory. No doubt Amash would accuse them too of burning what they brought into being.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/mueller-report-democrats-impeachment-theater/

T he House Democrats are frustrated, very frustrated.

They’ve gotten themselves entangled in procedural disputes with the Trump administration that no one particularly cares about and that might be litigated for a very long time.

A Washington Post report over the weekend spelled out how stymied Democrats feel and that they are considering, via the power of inherent contempt, fining or arresting people who are defying their subpoenas.

This is very unlikely to happen, obviously. A New York Times report a few days ago on the Democrats’ exasperation said they might consider having hearings with empty chairs. Oh, the drama.

Jerry Nadler, per the Times, “conceded that the White House strategy had thus far succeeded in tamping down energy around the Mueller report and investigations.”