RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/post/china-is-on-the-ballot-in-2020/

American voters will decide if the PRC wins.

In early May, President Donald Trump ordered a federal retirement fund to scrap its plans to shift several billion dollars’ worth of U.S. government employee savings into Chinese stocks. The administration is now planning a broader review of China’s unfair and potentially dangerous usage of American capital markets. This is about far more than mundane matters of bureaucracy and asset allocation. It epitomizes the existential battle facing America.

The Status Quo

Our public servants will now no longer be underwriting military contractors that support the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) People’s Liberation Army—an army that has threatened U.S. servicemen and engaged in espionage against U.S. civilians. Nor will we be funding “enterprises” indicted for violating U.S. sanctions in conducting business with enemies like CPC customer Iran and satrap North Korea; or technology companies that produce the surveillance equipment used to run the CPC’s modern-day gulags and supply other police states. These are all welcome developments.

But the fact that these travesties would have transpired had the Trump administration not intervened is a sobering truth with implications that transcend capital markets. It touches on the long-term competition into which America has finally entered with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Near-term, the 2020 election is critical to sustaining this competition.

Following the Cold War, the stated rationale for U.S.-PRC relations was one of economic self-interest and idealism: Economic liberalization would lead to political and cultural liberalization. Relatedly, the story went, an integrated and prosperous China would be a peaceful and stable one.

For decades, Joe Biden has been one of the most senior proponents of this view. During the height of the 2000 debate that resulted in the granting of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China, putting it on a glidepath to World Trade Organization accession that would accelerate its drive toward superpower status, Biden asserted that PRC “prosperity…has put China on a path toward ever-greater political and economic freedom.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/13/will-democrats-do-the-right-thing-respecting-catholics/

A coalition of prominent Catholics has asked prominent Democrats to step up and defend American Catholics against anti-Catholic bigotry. Will they do it?

Anti-Catholicism, it has been said, is the anti-Semitism of intellectuals.

I’m not sure anyone would accuse Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) of being an intellectual. Her colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee such as Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) are also safe from that accusation (and simple courtesy requires that we pass by Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono in silence). But by dint of long occupation in the corridors of power, they all have imbibed the shallow, pseudo-enlightened anti-Catholicism that comes with membership in The Club. 

Examples are legion, but one memorable exhibition came in 2017. Amy Coney Barrett, a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and a prominent Roman Catholic, was nominated by President Trump for a position on the Court of Appeals in the Seventh Circuit. Sen. Feinstein, like a mosquito buzzing furiously to get inside the netting and draw blood, clearly was troubled by Barrett’s Catholicism, especially as it related the question of abortion in general and Roe v. Wade in particular. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Sen. Feinstein observed, “and that’s a concern.” 

Judge Barrett pointed out that she would not, as an Appeals Court Judge, be in a position to adjudicate the Constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. Moreover, she said, her originalist judicial philosophy respected precedent and strove to keep politics out of the judicial process. We have politicians to do politics. She would follow the law, not her personal preferences, in deciding cases. 

The exchange went viral, serving to highlight the reflexive hostility to Catholics, and indeed to practicing Christians generally, among our elites. It also highlighted a deep, er, tension between the habitual badgering of Catholic nominees about the niceties of their faith and the prohibition against religious tests for office enshrined with all possible clarity in Article VI of the Constitution. “[N]o religious Test,” that brief Article concludes, “shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The president of the Anti-Defamation League, the president of Princeton University, the president of Notre Dame University, and the Harvard Law Review, are among those who, stirred by Feinstein’s admonition, have publicly declared their concern about this violation of the spirit if not the letter of Article VI. 

https://pjmedia.com/election/rick-moran/2020/06/11/biden-this-president-is-going-to-try-to-steal-this-election-n517426

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah that Donald Trump will try to “steal” the 2020 presidential election.

Saying that on a comedy show was quite appropriate.

Indeed, Biden picked up on a familiar Democratic narrative—that the GOP will try to steal the election by “suppressing” the vote. Now, logic would dictate that many votes that Trump and the Republicans would supposedly be “suppressing” would actually be cast for the GOP.

So, Republicans and Trump want to suppress their own vote? A novel notion, but not logical. It’s not even sane.

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/06/05/rasmussen-black-voter-approval-for-trump-has-surged-to-over-40-percent-n499859

Despite the left’s recent efforts to paint Trump as a racist and blame him for police brutality and the riots, Rasmussen Reports says that approval for President Trump amongst likely black voters is now over 40 percent.

Trump received 8 percent of the African American vote in 2016. In August 2019, black voter approval for Trump stood at 26 percent.

I am admittedly skeptical of Rasmussens 40 percent approval number, nevertheless, the increase of 14 points from a year ago suggests that Trump’s support from within the black community is increasing, despite the best efforts of the Democrats and the media to paint him as a racist. With the economy starting to recover, that approval is bound to increase.