The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 09.18.20

Posted on | September 18, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Everything’s back to normal this weekend (kayn aynhoreh); deadline for the FMJRA is tomorrow at noon and for Rule 5 Double-Scoop Sunday, it’s midnight. Thanks in advance for your links.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Jihad In Germany
EBL: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, RIP
Twitchy: Mitch McConnell Promises Senate Vote On Trump’s Nominee To Replace RBG
Louder With Crowder: #BLM Marches In Support Of Black Criminals
Vox Popoli: Pedophists In The Evangelical Church, also, Don’t Talk To The Media, Part CXIV
According To Hoyt: Absolute Truth & The Death of Turpitude
Stoic Observations: After The Bomb

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies, Shaking 2020 Race
American Greatness: Trump HIts 53% Job Approval In Rasmussen Poll, also, Silicon Valley & Biden Colluding To Rig 2020 Election
American Power: We Are All Algorithms Now
American Thinker: Who Killed George Floyd? also, No Rational Person Can Vote D In 2020
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Bullshitting Friday
Babalu Blog: Socialist Spain Outlaws All Praise Of Franco Regime, But Lauding Cuba’s Commies Is A-OK
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 17
Cafe Hayek: Adam Smith & His National Defense Exception To Unlimited Free Trade
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Five Quick Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, DaTechGuy Off Da Radio Podcast
Don Surber: Wages Stagnated For 45 Years Until Trump Came Along, also, Libs Abandon Illegal Aliens
The Geller Report: AG Barr Takes Aim At Deep State Prosecutors In Justice Department, also, Antifa Tells Followers To “Spread Fire”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Bad Science & Even Worse Theology
Hollywood In Toto: Wall Of Mexico Offers Sumptuous Visuals & Vapid Arguments, also, The Oscar’s Cynical Affirmative Action Won’t Satisfy Anyone
JustOneMinute: Kind Of A BFD
The Lid: Occasional Cortex Says Radical Left Will Push Biden In A “More Progressive Direction”
Legal Insurrection: Biden Lies Again About Being First In His Family To Attend College, also, #BLM Protesters Target Georgetown CVS Because Employees Called Police On Shoplifters
The PanAm Post: Iran Recruits “Sympathizers” To Reinforce Presence In Venezuela
Power Line: Conventional Wisdom Distilled, also, On “Dog Whistles” & Democrat Pea-Brains
Shark Tank: Byron Donalds Says He’ll Join House Freedom Caucus, Black Congressional Caucus
Shot In The Dark: Go Figure
The Political Hat: The Eight Commandments Of The Critical Race Theory Faith
This Ain’t Hell: Let’s Laugh At Some Commies, also, Happy Birthday, U.S. Air Force!
Victory Girls: Klacik Vs. Mean Girls On The View
Volokh Conspiracy: RBG RIP
Weasel Zippers: Law Enforcement Says There’s Evidence Of “Criminal Human Activity” Causing Wildfires, also, Biden Cybersecurity Expert Is Former Member Of Racist Internet Trolling Group “Gay N****r Association Of America”
The Federalist: Tucker Carlson Blames George Soros & Democrats For Enabling Rising Urban Violence, also, PBS Reporter Defends Riot-Cheerleading 1619 Project Writer As “National Treasure”
Mark Steyn: Singing Out

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Category: Linkagery

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead at 87

Posted on | September 18, 2020 | Comments Off on Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead at 87

 

Breaking news:

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died this evening surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87 years old. Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993.
She was the second woman appointed to the Court and served more than 27 years. She is survived by her two children: Jane Carol Ginsburg (George Spera) and James Steven Ginsburg (Patrice Michaels), four grandchildren: Paul Spera (Francesca Toich), Clara Spera (Rory Boyd), Miranda Ginsburg, Abigail Ginsburg, two step-grandchildren: Harjinder Bedi, Satinder Bedi, and one great- grandchild: Lucrezia Spera. Her husband, Martin David Ginsburg, died in 2010.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. said of Justice Ginsburg: “Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her — a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

Well, this certainly raises the stakes for Nov. 3.

UPDATE: Ace has some thoughts here.

You know what I hate? Confrontation.

Like, I would never agree to be part of a “counter-protest.” If somebody is having a rally, let ’em have their rally, and if you disagree, go organize your own rally. Don’t show up at somebody else’s event to do an “in your face” protest against them having an event. The reason I mention this is because the whole protest/counter-protest dynamic has been so normalized during the past 15 or 20 years that we just take it for granted and now — now — we’re going to have the Mother of All Battles over the nomination to replace Ginsburg. I get a headache thinking about it.




 

Category: Supreme Court

‘Sundown Joe’ Babbles Incoherently About Fracking in CNN Pennsylvania Town Hall

Posted on | September 18, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

The first thing you have to understand about this is, the question Joe got here was scripted in advance — from a union official, pitching an underhand softball question to the candidate he supports — and that Biden’s response was also scripted. But as Ed Morrissey points out, Biden was tripping all over himself trying to answer:

TOM CALPIN, BUSINESS AGENT FOR IRONWORKS UNION: Good evening Mr. Vice President, Mr. Cooper. With the abundance of natural gas in northeast Pennsylvania. Do you support the continuation of fracking safely and with proper guidelines, of course, and growing the industry (INAUDIBLE) additional jobs to our region?
BIDEN: Yes, I do. I do. In addition to that, we can provide for right now as you know, for thousands of uncapped wells because a lot of companies gone out of business, whether they’re gas or oil facilities, we can put to work right away 250,000 people from iron workers and other disciplines, making union wages. Capping those wells that are leaking methane and their danger to the community.
And so, not only do I continue to support it. Jobs, it’s an important for this community. It’s important for Pennsylvania, and Ohio and other states. It’s an important, it’s an important business. And it’s a lot of wages are involved in that. But beyond that, beyond that, we can also get people working now, capping the wells that are left uncapped right now across this region and all the way there’s hundreds of thousands of them all across the nation. And that put a lot of people to work.

[CNN’s ANDERSON] COOPER: Let me just follow up on that. You said you won’t ban fracking but did you wanted to gradually move away from it ultimately. It sounds like to some of you’re trying to have it both ways that that I mean, politically, it’s understandable why you might say that but it — if fracking contributes to climate change, and climate change is an existential threat. Why should it fracking continue at all?
BIDEN: Well, fracking has to continue because we have transition, we’re going to get to net zero emissions by 2050. And we’ll get to net zero power admissions by 2035. But there’s no rationale to eliminate right now fracking, number one. Number two, those jobs that are out there, whether it’s a IBW (ph) worker, or whether it’s an iron worker, or a steel worker. What I’m proposing is that, you know, when Trump thinks about global warming, he thinks hoax. When I hear global warming, I think jobs. What I’m going to make sure we do is we could transition in a way for example. We’re going to build 500 — the reason why all these unions have endorsed me is that they know my position, that I’m going to make sure that we have 500,000 charging stations in our highways so we can all the electric car market, creating a million jobs and we can lead the world. And in Detroit, we can lead the world and making sure we move to electric vehicles
As president of United States, I’ll have one of the largest fleets — we spent $600 billion a year federal money for federal contracts, I got to make sure they’re all those contracts are all products made in America, including the chain that provides for every one of those products. I’m going to do away with the tax break that the President gave people who send jobs abroad, to make sure that if you in fact, have a contract, if you with taxpayers my money, you must use American products, you must buy American products, and you must not be in a position where you’re exporting. We have 25 — we have over 50% more people moving jobs overseas as a consequence of these contracts, so it’s all backwards. And this is going to provide a lot of good paying jobs for people in the trades.

 

God have pity on whoever’s job it was to transcribe Biden’s words here, but beyond the problem of his mangled syntax, the position that Biden was trying to describe makes no sense at all. He is claiming that he can “create” jobs by destroying the energy industry. If you believe what Biden says (and I don’t think you should but never mind), there are lots of union-wage jobs to be had by capping old wells that leak methane gas.

Question: Is President Trump against capping old wells?

Whatever the answer to that question might be, you see that Biden is only making this claim as a defense against the obvious implication of the Democrats policy against fossil-fuel production. Democrats want to eliminate all U.S. petroleum, coal and natural gas production, which would obviously be bad for miners in Pennsylvania, so in order to pretend that their “green energy” utopia won’t kill jobs, Biden makes this claim about jobs to be “created” by capping old wells.

“Net zero emissions by 2050” — by which time Biden will almost certainlty have been dead for more than 20 years. See how this works? You set a goal for some distant future point, so that it is basically impossible to measure your “progress” toward that goal in any meaningful way. The economic damage inflicted by your job-killing policies is immediate, whereas the alleged benefit of these policies is over the horizon somewhere. You are quite deliberately destroying a very valuable sector of the U.S. economy — real dollars paying for real people to produce real products — in order to pander to an autistic Swedish teenager and the rest of the climate-change panic brigade.

Only a fool could support such a policy, and Democrats nominated a fool.




 

Category: CNN, Joe Biden, Pennsylvania

Boston Serial Rapist Faces Life in Prison; His Sister Endorsed Kamala Harris

Posted on | September 18, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

His sister is a local Democrat politician:

A 39-year-old Cumberland, Rhode Island, man who has been accused of posing as a rideshare driver in order to target women at Boston bars has been indicted on charges including rape and kidnapping, officials said Wednesday.
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins has called the suspect, Alvin Campbell, a serial rapist. Campbell was indicted Tuesday on two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated rape, five counts of rape, two counts of indecent assault and battery, one count of assault with intent to rape and eight counts of filming an unsuspecting person in the nude. The indictment moves Campbell’s case to Suffolk Superior Court.
The charges reflect assaults against seven women between 2017 and 2019. Campbell was previously indicted in March for an attack on an eighth woman that occurred in 2019, Rollins’ office said in a statement.
Campbell will be arraigned on the indictments at a later date. Additionally, Campbell is charged as a habitual offender based on prior convictions for violent acts and firearm offenses, the statement said. The habitual offender indictment opens Campbell to the potential of life in prison if found guilty.
Campbell posed as a rideshare driver in connection with six of the indicted offenses, the district attorney’s office said, trying to target women near bars. In two incidents, the victims believed Campbell was a bouncer.
Most of the assaults happened in Campbell’s vehicle, Rollins’ office said. Campbell is accused of assaulting two women at their apartment after driving them to the residence.
“He is charged with filming each of the victims, who were unconscious, in a state of undress,” the statement said. “In five of the assaults, he allegedly filmed the victims as he raped them.”
Campbell is the brother of Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell.
Rollins’ office previously said that Campbell last worked for Uber in 2016. When his vehicle was seized in the first case, “it was festooned with Uber stickers and logos.”

Andrea Campbell’s father went to prison, her twin brother died in jail, and now her other brother is facing a life sentence for serial rape. Andrea Campbell, who has “long been a champion of law enforcement reform and accountability,” last year endorsed Kamala Harris for president.




 

Category: Crime, Kamala Harris, Massachusetts

In The Mailbox: 09.17.20

Posted on | September 17, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.17.20

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: Wednesday Whittle
357 Magnum: The Media Lies Again
EBL: Remember When Schools Actually Celebrated The Constitution & Patriotism?
Twitchy: Princeton President Wrote That Racism Is “Embedded” At The University – Education Dept. Investigating
Louder With Crowder: Fox News Cuts Off Newt Gingrich For Bringing Up George Soros, And We’re As Confused As Newt Is
Vox Popoli: New Nests To Foul, also, Trumpslide 90%
Sh0eOnHead: I Watched Cuties Because You Told Me To (And Now I’m On An FBI Watchlist)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Trump Challenges Pro-War Foreign Policy Elite
American Greatness: AG Barr Pushes For Sedition Charges Against Violent Rioters, also, Two Campaign Workers For Ilhan Omar’s GOP Opponent Shot, One Fatally
American Power: Whose America Is It?
American Thinker: How The Underground Press Will Thwart The Media & Re-elect Trump
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Young Commies News
Babalu Blog: Rudy Giuliani Tells NYC Mayor & School Chancellor They Should Go Back To Cuba
BattleSwarm: Is Red China Backing Antifa/#BLM?
Cafe Hayek: Economic Ignorance Runs Deep
CDR Salamander: A Four Year Late Start
Da Tech Guy: Tweets & Threads That Should Have Been Blog Posts, also, Is It Possible For Opposite Ends Of The Political Spectrum To Communicate With Each Other?
Don Surber: Swedes Stand Up To Red Chinese Slavery, also, Holding Their Breath Until America Turns Blue
First Street Journal: The Left Decries White Privilege, But They Sure Get Concerned About Cute Little White Girls
The Geller Report: 162 House Democrats Vote Against Bill To Combat Antisemitism, also, Trump Announces Executive Order To Promote “Patriotic Education”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: ABC Memory Holes The Path To 9/11, also, Chris Rock Threw Jimmy Fallon Under The Cancel Culture Bus
JustOneMinute: Glide Path, Interrupted
The Lid: Judge Rules Recall Of Socialist Seattle Councilwoman Can Proceed
Legal Insurrection: Facebook & Instagram Now Flagging Tucker Carlson’s Coronavirus Posts As “False Information”, also, Survey Finds 20% Of Millenials & Gen Z In NY Believe Jews Caused The Holocaust
The PanAm Post: James Story Says Elliott Abrams Was Misinterpreted
Power Line: Princeton’s “Systematic Racism” Gets The Feds’ Attention, also, Seeing The Minneapolis Effect
Shot In The Dark: This Is What Dismantlement Looks Like, also, DIY
STUMP: Keeping Up With Meep – Public Pensions, MEPs, Public Finance, & More
The Political Hat: The Rotting Of Art, also, The Cowardly Propaganda Of Courteous Conversation
This Ain’t Hell: Carol Badoni, Fake Twice-Wounded Afghan War Vet, also, Trump Presents DFC To Seven California Guardsmen
Victory Girls: Democrats Planning For Riots If Trump Wins
Volokh Conspiracy: WSJ Op-Ed – Homicide Stats Show “Minneapolis Effect”
Weasel Zippers: Media Says Timberland Boots Are Only Sexy When Democrats Wear Them, also, #BLM Co-Founder Teams Up With Red Chinese Communist Party Group
The Federalist: FISA Court Confirms FBI Lied In Every Spy Warrant Application Against Carter Page, also, Leaked 2016 Call Reveals Biden Risked National Security To Sabotage Trump
Mark Steyn: Joe Goes Corny Pop, also, Virtue-Signaling Unto Death

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Category: Linkagery

When Do Black Lives Matter, and Why?

Posted on | September 17, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Cortavion Tyriques Shemerlee Murphy was 15 years old and behind the wheel of a stolen Dodge Charger traveling about 115 mph when he crashed into a tree, killing himself and four passengers, all minors.

The crash that killed Murphy and his passengers — two 15-year-old boys, Jaquarius Hegler and Marshawn Williams, and two girls, Elexus Hillsman, 16,and Deztanee Cobb, 17 — happened around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2017. Shortly before the crash, the Dodge Charger had blown past a police car in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The cop had at first tried to pursue the Dodge, but gave up, telling the dispatcher: “Yeah, I’m going to have to terminate it. It’s well over 100 mph.” The officer continued traveling east on Main Street at normal speed and, about a mile later, came across the site of the flaming wreckage:

 

It took four days for the medical examiner to identify the charred remains of the five teenagers killed in this crash, using dental records. But immediately after the crash, Cortavion Murphy’s mother told local media she knew that her son was driving the Dodge:

Jamila McFerrin, Murphy’s mother, said she is still in shock.
“That’s my child, my first born,” McFerrin said. “We were just laughing, talking and taking pictures at 10:30 last night. To get called saying he was in his accident. I just thought it was an accident.”
“Losing my child is tough, but knowing he was the driver and responsible for other children in the car is tough as well,” McFerrin said.

Who was Cortavion’s father? Nothing I could find online gave any hint about that, but a bit of research shows that his mother was only 16 when she gave birth to him. Apparently, however, Cortavion and his mother were living with a man named Leonard Stafford. That information involves the story of how Cortavion got hold of the car:

According to the reports, police believe the driver waited until his parents were in bed to put a license plate that was not registered on the Charger before leaving home. . . .
Then-Undersheriff Paul Matyas said in a report he was approached by Leonard Stafford at the scene of the crash. Stafford told Matyas that “I just got that car. It didn’t have plates on it and it didn’t have insurance on it and I told him not to drive it, he must’ve taken the keys.”
The teen’s name Stafford was talking about was redacted.
The vehicle had been reported stolen out of Detroit in May 2016, according to Michigan State Police.
Officers contacted Stafford again Sept. 16 at his house in Kalamazoo.
“He said that he had not really bought the vehicle, that he had been doing work on the vehicle and the person he was doing the work for had not paid for his services,” KCSO Det. Sgt. Jim VanZile wrote in a report. VanZile wrote that Stafford told him a Detroit man brought him the car to work on in May 2017.
“He worked on the transmission and the engine of the vehicle and (the man) did not pay him for all of the work he had completed,” VanZile wrote.
Stafford told police the man was “one of those drug boys” from Detroit who sells drugs in Kalamazoo.
Stafford also told police he had put a plate on the vehicle from another car he was working on and had never insured the vehicle. He denied ever letting the teen drive the vehicle, and said he left the keys in the car the night it was taken. He said he did not know the vehicle was stolen out of Detroit in May 2016.

So, if we may connect the dots here, Cortavion’s mother’s boyfriend was doing repairs on this car that was stolen in Detroit, and which had been brought to him by a known drug dealer. The mother’s boyfriend denied knowing the car was stolen, and also denied giving the teenager permission to drive the car, although the keys were conveniently left in it.

You may be wondering why I am telling the story of this 2017 car accident. It’s because, unless you live in Michigan, you almost certainly never heard of the death of these five black teenagers. Why? Because there was no “systemic racism.” The story offered no political advantage to Democrats, and therefore the national media ignored it.

See, this is what I’ve figured out: “Black Lives Matter,” as the slogan of a political movement, is a wicked lie. Black lives only “matter” to these activists when a black person is killed by a white cop, a death that can be leveraged (a) to whip up a frenzy of anti-police anger, (b) to incite a generalized hatred of white people within the black community, and thus (c) to “energize” black voters to help elect Democrats.

As a statistical proposition, what #BlackLivesMatter claims about police and racism is easily disproven. Anyone who has followed the work of Heather Mac Donald (author of The War on Cops) knows that the actual number of unarmed black people killed by police is a tiny decimal point fraction in comparison to the number of black people killed by black criminals. But because black-on-black violence can’t be leveraged to support radical rhetoric about “systemic racism” (and thus to help elect more Democrats), the national media ignore the bloody death toll of black-on-black crime. The result of this one-sided media bias is a wildly distorted public perception of crime and race in America.

Whenever I write up a story like this, my intent is to balance the false perception created by the national media’s warped coverage, which feeds a myth of white racism as the one-size-fits-all explanation for every problem affecting black people in America. Racism obviously had nothing to do with the death of Cortavion Murphy and his passengers — and that’s why nobody outside of Michigan ever heard of this story. Five black teenagers killed and not a peep from CNN or the New York Times.




 

Category: Crime, Michigan, Racism

No Lower Form of Human Scum Exists: @TheRickWilson Engaged in Blackmail?

Posted on | September 17, 2020 | Comments Off on No Lower Form of Human Scum Exists: @TheRickWilson Engaged in Blackmail?

 

Whenever some “alt-right” type accuses Republicans of being “controlled opposition,” my instinct is to dismiss this as paranoia. But then I remember that, for years, Rick Wilson claimed to be a Republican and now insists, along with the rest of the #NeverTrump crowd, that his unlimited support for Democrats is testimony to his “principles.”

Ace of Spades calls attention to a tweet by Wilson in which he rather transparently threatens Ben Domenech of The Federalist with an “oppo file” he describes as “hideous and vivid” in its details.

Let me share some advice: Never make threats.

If you’ve genuinely got the goods on somebody, either publish it or don’t.

Never threaten to publish dirt about somebody, because that makes it look more like blackmail than journalism. Of course, this business of treating journalists as public figures, subject to gossipy reporting about their personal lives, is a consequence of “cancel culture.” And notice this difference between Wilson and Domenech — Wilson is a longtime political consultant, someone who earned his living on the payroll of campaigns, whereas to my knowledge Domenech has always been an independent conservative journalist, rather than a campaign operative.

Domenech is obviously very close to powerful Republicans, but he is not (and, to my knowledge, never has been) on a campaign payroll. So if Domenech is “fair game” for the kind of “oppo file” smear that Wilson is threatening, then what political journalist is not fair game? Are we now supposed to “vet” journalists as we would a candidate? Because let me tell you that (a) journalists are generally a hard-drinking crowd, and (b) what journalists do when they’re drunk . . .

Well, finish that sentence however you wish. Suffice it to say that there is a pile of potential #MeToo stories lying around in the world of journalism, just waiting for someone to strike a match. You may have noticed the #MeToo campaign kind of lost its momentum once the subject of sexual misbehavior by journalists started making headlines.

Are Republican campaign operatives more scrupulous than journalists? Based on my own years of close observation, I’d say the answer is no.

Rick Wilson ought to consider whether he is scandal-proof, and whether some of his #NeverTrump allies might be vulnerable.

At any rate, anyone who ever had a high opinion of Rick Wilson needs to contemplate their own poor judgment. He’s vile scum.




 

Category: Scandal

Trump Getting 50% of the Catholic Vote

Posted on | September 17, 2020 | 1 Comment

The abortion issue is hurting Biden:

Catholic voters have an opportunity in November to help elect only the second Catholic president in U.S. history in former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, but already the more devout followers are lining up behind President Trump.
Gone are the days when nearly 80% of Catholic voters united to push Irish-Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy into the White House in 1960. Catholic voters today are split on the 2020 candidates, even though Mr. Biden is a lifelong Mass-attending Catholic, and Mr. Trump is a Presbyterian.
A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that 50% of registered Catholic voters plan to vote for Mr. Trump, while 49% back Mr. Biden.
“The Catholic vote is not a monolithic vote in America,” said Brian Burch, president of the conservative CatholicVote. “We’ve moved away from that kind of tribal, if-he’s-a-Catholic-therefore-I-trust-him view. There are other reasons inside our own church for that as well. It’s not enough to merely say you’re Catholic.”
While Mr. Biden is known for his regular church attendance — he and his wife Jill Biden worship at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware — polls show his supporters within the church tend to be less fastidious in their Sunday habits.
“The more you go to Mass and the more you self-describe as following the church’s teachings, the more likely you are to be voting for Trump,” said EWTN executive editor Matthew Bunson. “If you go to Mass less often and disagree with key teachings, you’re more likely to support Biden.”
About 18% of Catholics say they accept all the church’s teachings, versus 38% who say they accept most of them, and 29% who say they do not accept some key teachings, according to a February EWTN News/RealClearOpinion poll.
“Among Catholics who do practice the faith in a substantive way, yes, there’s been a dramatic shift over the last several decades away from the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party, and I think it’s been especially pronounced under President Trump,” Mr. Burch said.
He cited not only the abortion issue, on which Mr. Trump has been widely described as the most pro-life president ever, but his appeals to “this notion of the importance of place, of country, of patriotism, of family, of meaningful work,” as well as his political grit in the face of opposition.
“His policies are demonstrative proof of his pro-life credentials, but more important, and I increasingly hear this from Catholics, are his fortitude and courage,” Mr. Burch said. “Many Republican administrations in the past have paid lip service to the issue, and while they might be sympathetic to our cause, when things got difficult, they abandoned ship.”
Both camps are making plays for Catholic voters, and for good reason: Not only do they make up 22% of the U.S. electorate, but in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, Catholics voted with the winner, Mr. Bunson said.

Most Americans who identify as “Catholic” are what might be called cultural Catholics — usually people of Irish, Italian or Polish ancestry — who don’t regularly attend services and certainly don’t practice Catholic teachings, or otherwise they’d have six or eight kids. The fact that self-identified Catholic women do not, on average, have significantly more children than other American women tells you all you need to know about the decline of faith. If religious belief does not manifest itself as a behavioral difference from non-believers, then the salt has lost its savour.

To be pro-life is not merely to be anti-abortion. Catholic teaching explicitly condemns artificial contraception, and it is therefore to be expected that self-described Catholics would have far more numerous offspring than non-Catholics. The self-evident failure of Catholics in America to “practice what they preach” is at least as much of a scandal as pedophile priests, and these two scandals are not unrelated. Both are evidence of institutional corruption and being “conformed to this world.”




 

Category: Catholics, Donald Trump, Joe Biden
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