Posts Tagged ‘china’

Under The Fedora on Monday “Moderate” Opinion, Why Dems Attack, Selling China Rice, The Church following the rules, and a Pat’s still bring fear

Posted: December 1, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, business, culture, economy, media, News/opinion, nfl, politics, Sports, trade, under the fedora
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If you want to know why people don’t give “Moderate” Muslims the benefit of the doubt this is why

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It wasn’t long ago when such a piece would be too fringe even for the Guardian.

I think this tweet is the single best political justification for the media/left’s actions on Trump that I’ve read

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if you are the party out of power looking to regain it the last thing you want is for the people being “the happiest they’ve ever been” when your foes are in charge.

At the Doug Ross Journal (where I found the above tweet) I saw something that jumped out at me.

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It turns out this isn’t a new story:

The U.S. can now ship rice to China for the first time ever, signaling a win for President Donald Trump in his efforts to reshape the trade relationship just after talks between the nations broke down Wednesday.
Officials from the nations finalized a protocol to allow for the first-ever American shipments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday in a statement. China is the world’s biggest rice consumer, importer and producer.

That’s from 2017 and this is from Feb

While there’s no guarantee, farmers and millers are increasingly optimistic because the Chinese ban has been lifted, a handful of U.S. rice mills have been cleared for export, and China is looking to make the Trump administration happy with commodity purchases.
It was in December that China took a major step toward making that happen, changing its customs regs and officially lifting its ban on U.S. rice. Separately, China has now officially cleared seven of the 34 U.S. rice mills that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has asked China to certify under the country’s sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, U.S. industry and government officials tell Agri-Pulse. The remaining mills are still under Chinese consideration, sources say.

Oddly I don’t remember reading it before. Remember Media Bias isn’t just what gets reported, it’s what gets promoted.

Apparently a judge in Michigan believes it’s discrimination when a catholic priest decides not to enable her in a state of mortal sin to commit further mortal sin.

Judge Sara Smolenski, the chief judge of Michigan’s 63rd District Court, received a call from the priest at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, requesting she not attend communion.
“This is not about me against the priest, and it’s not really me against the church,” Smolenski told CNN. “This feels like selective discrimination. Why choose gay people, and why now?”
Smolenski, 62, said that the Rev. Scott Nolan, the priest at St. Stephen for approximately three years, called her on November 23 and told her, “‘It was good to see you in church on Sunday. Because you and Linda are married in the state of Michigan, I’d like you to respect the church and not come to communion.’”

Actually given the Pope we have the idea of a church actually enforcing the rules of the church might actually be newsworthy.

Finally thanks to my injury I was able to watch the entire Patriots game this weekend and see them one guy keeping his balance on an onside kick away from a shot at yet another miracle comeback.

It’s a testament to what Brady has done in the past that when they managed to score the 2nd of the three scores they needed for a chance that even with under a minute to go and no time outs kicking the ball that you could hear double in the voices of the announcers in a game that should have been over and feel fear in the stadium after Edelman caught that touchdown, but in reality the Texan response was classic Patriot defense by a former Pats defensive coordinator, leave the other team just enough space and just enough time to get close but still lose.

Fall of Berlin Wall anniversary offers lessons for misguided millennials

Posted: November 10, 2019 by John Ruberry in culture, education, entertainment, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger next to Berlin Wall slab at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in 2018

By John Ruberry

Saturday was the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most profound events of the 20th century, the fall of the Berlin Wall. What began as a bureaucratic slip became a people power moment as oppressed East Germans stormed the wall checkpoints and with the help of West Berliners, literally began hacking away on what Winston Churchill called “the wall of shame.”

It was also a wall of failure. The smartest and most gifted people of communist East Germany were more likely to seek freedom and prosperity in the West. The brain drain threatened the stability of East Germany, so after receiving permission from his fellow dictator, the USSR’s Nikita Krushchev, Walter Ulbricht ordered construction of the wall in the summer of 1961.

Just a few days ago Dennis Prager explained on his show that there is a difference between a dictatorship and a totalitarian state. Augosto Pinochet’s Chile was a brutal nation in the 1970s, but if you didn’t like it, you could leave Chile. Not so in the USSR, until its final days, where my wife was born, or in the absurdly-named German Democratic Republic. East Germans who tried to escape to West Berlin would have to conquer not just the wall, but also beds of nails, attack dogs, and barbed wire, as well as avoid sharpshooters in watch towers. The number of people killed attempting to escape in the 28-year existence of the wall is disputed–about 200 is a common estimate.

Of growing up in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Mrs. Marathon Pundit told me this morning when I was discussing this post, “We were slaves, really.”

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll released last week shows that over one-third of millennials approve of communism, which betrays the failure of our schools and universities that seem much more interested promoting the 56 genders and waving their fingers at guys like me over “white privilege.” Oh, the founders of the communist movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were white dudes. As were the earliest communists in power, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky. All five of them came from middle class or wealthy backgrounds. They had white privilege.

OK, millennials!

The lessons of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the evils of Nazism obviously should never be forgotten. But what is overlooked by schools and society are the murderous regimes of Stalin (20 million killed, maybe more), Mao Zedong (65 million killed, maybe more). and Cambodia’s Pol Pot (1.5 million killed and perhaps more, roughly 20 percent of that nation’s population).

Another 30th anniversary involving a repressive communist regime passed this summer–the Tianammen Square protests in China that ended in the slaughter of pro-democracy activists. For 24 straight weeks there have been pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong. The more things change…

Ulbricht and his successors’ East Germany didn’t have the high death count, but it excelled in mental torture. Its KGB was the Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, whose goal was to “know everything about everyone.” Two movies are essential viewing for millennials–actually for everyone–to learn more about East Germany. Both of them are available on Netflix, Karl Marx City, a documentary, and The Lives of Others, an Academy Award winner for Best International Feature Film. Fittingly, The Lives of Others is set in the year 1984.

Apologists for communism regularly point out that the reason these Marxist regimes failed is that the wrong people were in charge and “real communism” has never been tried. It is they who are wrong. People in power, for the most part, have one thing in common. They want even more power.

There are exceptions of course. King George III asked an American what George Washington would do now that he had defeated the British Empire. When told that the general would return to his farm, the king replied, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Is that lesson being taught in many American schools? I doubt it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Imagine if South African PM Pieter Botha invested in the NBA in 1979

Posted: October 16, 2019 by datechguy in nba, politics, Sports
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After watching the NBA in general the last week and LeBron James in particular this week there must be a bunch of elderly South African exiles kicking themselves today. If only they had known!

Just think, if back in 1979 or the early 80’s South Africa PM Pieter Botha had the foreknowledge of today he could have invested a big chunk of South Africa’s not unsubstantial wealth in the NBA. What a difference it would have made!

Imagine Magic Johnson or Doctor J or Michael Jordan out there saying how misunderstood South Africa is. Ponder Celtics big three of Bird, Parish and McHale insisting that we have no business butting in. Picture Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman James Worthy, Patrick Ewing and the lot having no comment and finally Sir Charles statement on china rephrased defending his fellow players not getting into the issue of Apartheid in South Africa because of finances.

And why stop at South Africa? Think of all the other oppressive regimes in the past 100 years, if they only knew that a stake in an American sports league might have made the difference for them. The Central Powers might have won World War 1. Saddam might still be feeding people into wood chippers, the Soviet Union might not have fallen (the idea of funding US colleges turned out to operate too slow to save them), Idi Amin kids would be ruling Uganda, Hitler might still control most of Europe and completed his final solution.

And of course if baseball crazy Japan had thought of this in 1940 this entire China kerfuffle wouldn’t exist because Japan, thanks presumably to the support of US Ballplayers they had paid, wouldn’t have felt the need to hit Pearl Harbor. Instead they would still be ruling China with an iron fist.

All of these things could have been if they had only thought of investing in a US sports league the way China has the NBA.

Of course it’s just possible that today we are dealing with lesser sons of greater fathers who would not have sold themselves, but there just might be some elderly Japanese vet in a nursing home who fought in China in 1940 watching all this unfold on TV & thinking to himself. “It would have been worth a shot”

Reminder that Climate Change Activists are Full of It

Posted: September 22, 2019 by julietteochieng in News/opinion
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by baldilocks

School children went on strike in the name of climate change last week. I don’t even feel like checking to see which day it was because I know that the activists who put these kids up to skipping class don’t really care about the climate. If they did, the United States would be far down on the list for castigation.

But the activists are all over Americans and Europeans about climate change and pollution for simple reasons: they know that the West is capable of being shamed about it and that Westerners have money. Activists pretty much ignore the real problem nations, places like India …

Twenty-two of the world’s 30 worst cities for air pollution are in India, according to a new report, with Delhi again ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

The Greenpeace and AirVisual analysis of air pollution readings from 3,000 cities around the world found that 64% exceed the World Health Organization’s annual exposure guideline for PM2.5 fine particulate matter – tiny airborne particles, about a 40th of the width of a human hair, that are linked to a wide range of health problems.

Every single measured city in the Middle East and Africa exceeds the WHO guidelines, as well as 99% of cities in south Asia and 89% in east Asia.

… and China.

According to search results, China and Pakistan compete for the most polluted countries in the world. Most of the other top polluters are in South Asia and Africa, as mentioned in the Guardian link.

Some of these lists of Top Ten Most Sh*tholiest Countries slide the United States and other First World countries into the mix, but I wonder, in spite of what we’ve seen lately in Baltimore and in Los Angeles.

Look at this video. It’s said to be from the Dominican Republic.

Look. I understand why none of the activists want to go bother the children of Middle Eastern Muslims, Africans, or the Chinese. I mean who wants to die or get arrested in, say, Nigeria?

But let’s stop pretending that America is the Devil in the religion of climate change.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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