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Ruth King

China: Existential Threat to America by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16705/china-existential-threat

We can, of course, cooperate with a China that is a partner or a friend. We can even cooperate with a China that is a competitor; all nations to some degree compete. The question is this: Is China merely just a competitor? Can we, for instance, cooperate with a China that is an opponent or an enemy?

Multilateralism, the core ideology of the UN, is failing. Countries are bypassing the UN because they realize it cannot provide security. Countries are defending themselves.

China’s unrestricted warfare — a term Beijing has been using for at least 21 years — now includes biological attack.

In late January, US Customs and Border Patrol agents seized 900,000 counterfeit one‑dollar bills from China at the International Port of Entry in Minnesota…. By the way, counterfeiting another country’s currency is more than just subversion. That is an act of war.

Xi has always believed that China should rule the world. He has always believed he had to get the United States out of the way, especially because Americans promote ideals that are anathema to totalitarianism.

Beijing leaders know they are running out of time. It is really no mystery why they may feel this way. China’s demography is in the initial stages of accelerated decline. We know that China’s environment is exhausted. Think scarcity of water, despite all the flooding.

Up to now, the primary basis of legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party has been the continual delivery of prosperity. Without the assurance of prosperity, the only remaining basis of legitimacy is nationalism. Nationalism, as a practical matter, means military misadventure abroad.

A Chinese enterprise is now pouring about three billion dollars into Freeport in the Bahamas, 87 miles east of Palm Beach. I think that we are going to see, unless the US stops it, the People’s Liberation Army with a naval base 87 miles east of Palm Beach.

We cannot afford to have these consulates not only engaging in espionage but also trying to bring down the government of the United States…. Everyone wants to maintain friendly relations with every country, but we cannot maintain friendly relations with a country that is trying to subvert us in the way China’s been doing.

We cannot afford to lose any time giving grace periods to a regime that is relentlessly attacking us. We have to be concerned that an incoming president will do what every president has tried to do. That is the impossible: to attempt to develop cooperative relations with a militant Chinese state.

It is up to the President of the United States to change companies’ incentives. He can do that with the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Trump used that on TikTok. A US federal judge in the District of Columbia overturned, or at least stayed, his order, which means President Trump needs, first of all, to start thinking about not only the ’77 act but also the 1917 act, which is the “Trading with the Enemy Act ” because judges would have less scope for overturning a designation of that sort…. We need to do much more because China is not going to let us alone in our own hemisphere.

Because China killed 20 Indian soldiers on June 15, India has gone in a good direction, cutting off Huawei, cutting off TikTok, cutting off Chinese companies. We need to do the same thing. Remember, China declared a “people’s war” on the United States in May of last year. They told us we’re the enemy, so we might as well take them at their word.

In the Atlantic, there are two other places that China would like military bases. One of them is Walvis Bay in Namibia, and the other is Terceira, in the Azores. Terceira is home to the Lajes US Air Force base. The US Air Force has redeployed, basically making it a ghost base. From there, China could control the mouth of the Mediterranean, control the North Atlantic, put Washington, DC and New York at risk. I think it is up to the US Air Force to start putting people in Lajes, so the Chinese realize that they cannot take over the airfield. Its runway is almost 11,000 feet long. It can accommodate any aircraft and can threaten the United States. The Atlantic, which we have seen as a preserve, could very well become a Chinese lake.

In terms of whether there might be another biological attack or not, you have to remember that China has been sending seeds, unsolicited, to Americans, to people in Britain, to people in Taiwan. That could very well be an attempt to cause havoc in the United States.

The point here is, we have to be prepared for anything. We need to make a clear declaration in public that the United States will defend Taiwan because Taiwan is crucial to maintaining our Western defense perimeter…. Taiwan is absolutely critical because it protects us from a surging Chinese air force and Chinese navy, trying to get to Hawaii.

Picture Brightening for Republicans Keeping Control of Senate By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/10/29/picture-brightening-for-republicans-keeping-control-of-senate-n1106135

Prospects for Republicans maintaining control of the Senate appear a little brighter as there are some polls showing Republicans very competitive in two Midwestern battleground states.

John James, a rising star in the Republican Party, is closing in fast on incumbent Democrat Gary Peters and some polls show James within the margin of error. James has been aided by a large infusion of cash from Senator McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund and with the polls all over the lot, it may come down to Election Day turnout.

The other Midwestern state where some experts say the Senate race is still competitive is Minnesota. Republicans had targeted the Gopher State from the start as the incumbent, Democrat Tina Smith, has been a weak candidate. Republican hopeful Jason Lewis is gaining in recent polls and some Republicans, including Majority Whip John Thune, think he’s got a decent shot at an upset.

The Hill:

“I think that people are looking at the security issues if you live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs,” he said, referring to the belief among Republicans that Trump’s law-and-order message will play well with suburban voters concerned about the rioting and looting in the city after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis in late May.

“You get to the rural areas and it’s real strong for the Republicans,” Thune added. “There’s always going to be a couple of surprises election night.”

Black Americans for Trump If around 30 percent of black Americans vote for President Trump, black America will not only rewrite the next political chapter but rewrite the entire political book. By Christopher Gage

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/black-americans-for-trump/

Will black Americans not only reelect President Trump, but also write a new chapter of American political history?

Yes, that’s quite a question—one of cosmos-bending proportions. And so are the figures undergirding that statement.

According to Rasmussen, black Americans plan to vote for President Trump in larger numbers than in 2016. That’s not surprising.

Yet, we are not talking just a point or two adding to that year’s eight percent total, but a whopping 31 percent.

On Thursday, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll found 31 percent of black likely voters plan to vote for Donald Trump.

That number must be an anomaly, right? A typo?

Apparently not. That figure has surged since Monday’s 27 percent finding, in lockstep with black approval of President Trump in the last week rising from 37 percent, before peaking at 46 percent, and settling on Thursday at 38 percent.

Is China Funding the Phony Joe Biden Campaign? Does anyone doubt that the Democratic Party—if they thought they could get away with it—would accept Chinese money? By Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/is-china-funding-the-phony-joe-biden-campaign/

Joe Biden is running a profoundly phony campaign. Hillary’s defeat is famously blamed on her low-energy decision to not show up in the Rust Belt. But Biden isn’t showing up anywhere.

No candidate since George Washington has campaigned so little and with so few live supporters. Joe Biden is no George Washington.

How can Biden be a contender when he gets 30 supporters at his rallies and Trump attracts 30,000? Biden attracted 130 cars to hear him in must-win Pennsylvania. In Miami, Latinos for Trump organized a 30,000 car parade on their own.

In a rare joint appearance, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris went to Phoenix. Biden needs Arizona to win.  Zero supporters turned out to greet them. Zero. Video of the eerie empty scene was carried on a local news station only. The Biden campaign says they did not let the public know about the visit to avoid large crowds.

More oddities: The Democrats are not mounting a ground game. No volunteers knocking on doors. Very little effort to register new voters, either.

This strategy doesn’t pass the sniff test for an honest campaign.

The answer, as usual in politics, is to follow the money. President Obama never came close to the money supporting Biden’s campaign.

It’s ‘High Noon’ in America Just like the movie, Trump makes the last stand against violent outlaws. Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/its-high-noon-america-joseph-hippolito/

“In the long run, November’s election demands answers to these questions: Do we begin the task of restoring the fundamental values on which the United States was built? Or do we allow a self-appointed coterie of arrogant totalitarians to build their “new order” on the bodies of the innocent?”

One of Hollywood’s greatest westerns provides a powerful metaphor for both the November election and the state of the nation.

Nearly seven decades after “High Noon” was released, the United States confronts the same kind of existential decision that Hadleyville, the movie’s fictional town, faced: Will the good citizens allow a band of violent outlaws seeking revenge to intimidate and dominate them, or will they support their marshal and fight?

The band of outlaws, in this case, is not Frank Miller’s celluloid gang. It’s the Left and its “progressive” ideology that permeates education, government, the arts, the church and much of the media. That ideology — which the Democratic Party proudly embodies — seeks to destroy the fundamental values providing the nation’s foundation.

Opposing the outlaws is President Donald Trump, who faces the same problem that challenged Marshal Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper): no support from the powers-that-be.

Kane’s commitment to stay and fight was rejected by Hadleyville’s mayor, judge, practically all the townsfolk and even his own wife. Trump’s commitment was rejected by his own party’s Establishment — the Bushes, Kristols, Kasichs, McCains and Romneys.

Yet unlike the movie, in which the townsfolk abandon Kane, Trump receives enthusiastic support from all demographic categories. That support represents contempt for a movement that wraps itself in the cloaks of “peace,” “social justice” and “tolerance” while subverting those values.

Pollster Who Nailed 2016 Says Trump Fast-Closing Gap With Nonstop Rallies Paul Sperry

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/30/pollster-who-nailed-2016-says-trump-fast-closing-gap-with-nonstop-rallies/

Conventional wisdom says that along with killing more than 228,000 Americans, the coronavirus has killed President Trump’s chances of a second term. Virtually all the Beltway pundits believe it. Wall Street appears to be pricing it in. Vegas is betting on it.

Yet even as most national polls have Democrat Joe Biden ahead by a seemingly insurmountable margin, “America’s most accurate pollster” has crunched the numbers and found a number of recent developments that give underdog Trump hope for another upset.

“The race is on the cusp of entering the competitive zone,” said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, a New Jersey-based polling firm that partners with Investor’s Business Daily. (The IBD/TIPP Poll was one of only two polls to predict President Trump’s victory in 2016; and in fact, was the only national poll to show Trump ahead in a four-way race heading into Election Day 2016.)

Mayur filled me in on some very interesting trends his team is seeing that all the gloomy pundits are missing. For one, Trump has “room to grow” in garnering votes in red states, while Biden has “peaked” in blue states. And Trump is creating some “real momentum” every day barnstorming rural areas of battleground states.

GDP Explodes 33.1% — Media Bury The Story

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/30/gdp-explodes-33-1-media-bury-the-story/

“So let’s review. The economy is rebounding from the pandemic lockdowns faster than anyone expected. Jobs are returning faster than the experts predicted, with employment growing by 14.2 million since April’s huge COVID-related plunge.”

A few weeks ago we noted that the third-quarter GDP number was likely to be a stunner, defying the endless claims by the press that the economy will struggle to emerge from the COVID-19 lockdowns. We also warned that voters wouldn’t get the news through the mainstream press.

Well, we were right on both counts.

The economy grew an absolutely breathtaking 33.1% from July through September, a quarterly gain never before achieved in this country. That means that we’ve already made up two-thirds of the losses. (Under Obama, it took a full year before the economy regained two-thirds of the loss suffered in the 2009 recession.)

Not only was the growth astonishing, it exceeded all expectations. At the start of the quarter, the Blue Chip Consensus was for the rebound to be less than 20%. After the quarter ended, it predicted that growth would be less than 30%.

The press? Well, it buried the story as deep as it possibly could.

Below is a slideshow presenting the home pages of major news sites as of 11 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday.

See for yourself how much space was devoted to this news. On several sites, the story doesn’t appear “above the fold.” On USA Today’s home page, you have to scroll two-thirds of the way to the bottom to see a link. And the feature story on its Money page was about National Cat Day .

If the stories appeared on the front page at all, the news about stellar third-quarter growth was followed by a big cautionary statement.

“…Problems remain,” says the New York Times.

“…That’s not the whole story,” says CNN

“…But the data is complicated,” says the Washington Post

“…But slowdown emerges,” says USA Today.

There is a cascade preference for Trump among black voters By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/there_is_a_cascade_preference_for_trump_among_black_voters.html

Before Trump took office, conventional wisdom was that American blacks would never vote Republican. As Lyndon Johnson reputedly said after passing the Civil Rights Act, “I’ll have those n****** voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” It didn’t matter that Democrats broke their promises or that their policies worsened the plight of inner-city blacks. Black voters remained loyal. This year, though, after Trump spent four years making a positive difference for black America, blacks are breaking ranks and openly supporting President Trump.

Thomas Sowell wrote in 2016, shortly before Trump was elected, “Black votes matter. If Republicans could get 20 percent of black votes, the Democrats would be ruined.” He added, though, “This is highly unlikely, given the approach used by Republicans.”

Thankfully, Trump jettisoned the traditional Republican approach to blacks, which was to ignore them. He supercharged the economy, which helped blacks. He choked off illegal immigration, which helped blacks. He reversed the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill that sent generations of black sons, brothers, and fathers to prison. He partnered with Sen. Tim Scott to create opportunity zones in black communities. He also worked with faith leaders, academics, musicians, and Kardashians, always with an eye, not to aggrandizing himself, but truly to improving the quality of black life in America.

Trump’s efforts have paid off. Van Jones, a black progressive, has acknowledged that Trump’s efforts have improved life for poor blacks. Van Jones isn’t the only black person to notice these positive changes.

The demise of America has been greatly exaggerated To be an American is to move ever forward, in pursuit of that ‘more perfect union’ Matt Purple

https://spectator.us/demise-america-greatly-exaggerated-exceptional/

One of my favorite quotes about America — mainly because it annoys so many people — comes from the historian Robert Wiebe. In his book Self-Rule, he writes:

‘Telling Americans to improve democracy by sinking comfortably into community, by losing themselves in a collective life, is calling into the wind. There has never been an American democracy without its powerful strand of individualism, and nothing suggests there will ever be.’

Cue the yelping from nationalists, socialists, Burkeans, take your pick. Yet Wiebe was less making a political argument than he was observing what was right in front of his nose. America has always been a nation of strivers, of men and women who seek to live up to their potential and who get annoyed if anyone throws a roadblock in their way. That quote, weirdly, paradoxically, sums up not just the attitude of individuals but a collective ethos. To be American is to move ever forward, in pursuit of that ‘more perfect union’. That isn’t to say we don’t value the past, but we’re more often looking at the road ahead than we are in the rearview mirror.

We saw this recently at the Republican National Convention, when Kimberly Guilfoyle screamed, ‘You are capable! You are qualified! You are powerful! And you have the ability to choose your life and determine your destiny!’ We saw a distorted version of it in the summer, when left-wing rioters decided that their narcissistic concept of progress meant much of American history had to be torn down. That’s the dark side of the striving mentality: it can too easily degenerate into cheap self-help platitudes and even Jacobin style radicalism. Sometimes we lurch ahead without considering whether it’s wise or desirable. If we invent electronic kiosks that put fast-food employees out of work, is that really progress? Are sex robots a waypoint towards a brighter tomorrow?

These are questions that Americans are going to have to confront in the years ahead. Yet there are also benefits to having the national gear shift set eternally to drive. Rather than wallowing in our problems, accepting them as indelible facts of history or insurmountable defects of the human person, we seek to overcome them.

The Biden Contradiction He’s running on Covid and character, but his policies are the most left-wing in decades.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-contradiction-11604012546?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Wall Street Journal hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate since 1928—Hoover—and we aren’t about to change this year. But we do try to sum up the risks and promise of the candidates every four years, and we’ll start today with the contradictory candidacy of Joe Biden.

The former Vice President is running as a reassuring moderate, a man of good character who can reunite the country and crush Covid-19 after the disruptive Trump Presidency. Yet he also is running on the most left-wing policy program in decades.

Voters have little idea about these policies because Mr. Biden mentions them only in the most vague, general terms. The press barely reports them. Americans may think they’re voting for Joe’s persona, but they will get the platform of Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.