The anti-Trump spin machine is in full swing. It’s difficult to believe that 47% of Americans want him impeached by trusting only one pollster—Fox News, which wrongly predicted his non-election. It’s even more difficult to believe that polls, in general, aren’t being doctored when someone managed to anonymously change the presidential seal on a background screen into a Russian eagle that golfs. These things suggest a concerted effort to undermine the president. But, we already knew about that, didn’t we?
Trump can’t be labeled as the only source of drama in America. The economy is up, but so are spending and debt. Jobs are returning to America while manufacturing flees China as fast as peace is fleeing Hong Kong—which China blames on the US. The UK has a new prime minister who is just as opposed by the outgoing administration as Trump is opposed by Washington’s still outstanding swamp.
The contrived Russianewsgategate fiasco wasn’t a bombshell, it was more of a fizzle and pop, and its biggest explosion may be its backfire. Now that the fizzling and popping are finished popping and fizzling, the investigation investigations are starting up; Comey is the lead person of great interest.
Like bad habits, bad people don’t go away easily. It takes time and effort. Bad people lie just because they know they can’t win any other way. And, it takes having a head in the right place to know when that’s happening.
In the singing, fake-smiling scenes of Uyghurs in reeducation camps in China, the Chinese expect the world to be swayed to believe they are happy. That’s how Chinese view it with each other—they fake-smile at each other and buy the lie because they hope other people buy into their own fake smiles. The Chinese have no idea that Westerners know when they are truly happy and truly not, being able to tell a fake smile when we see one—or two or ten thousand.
If Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang and China’s Global Times tabloid editor Hu Xijin are right—that the White House shouldn’t get “the credit” for China’s sinking economy—then China would be thankful, but they aren’t. It’s just more Chinese chicken-chest thumping. So focused on forcing the world to love them back, the Chinese Communist Party and their media puppets are unaware of how they come across to the rest of the world that actually does not need to bend to their demands.
Xi Jinping is the modern Hitler. He calmly talks of peace, claims to not want war, then rouses his sleeping anger to growl that he will use force if necessary. The concentration-brainwashing camps are set up and well-marketed. Everyday shows more unapologetic expansionism upon territories who want nothing to do with China. Symphony’s Asian Mad Scientist Theorem is proving too accurate for comfort and Hong Kong doesn’t want any part.
China might as well get used to this happening in Taiwan, though they won’t accept that the Taiwanese won’t accept Chinese rule any more than Hong Kongers. The difference is that Taiwan has missiles and a military. And, multiple times throughout half a millennium of adversity, Taiwan is only conquered by the enormous mainland when the enormous mainland is already conquered by something else. Mayor Han of Kaohsiung, the KMT-Nationalist contender in the upcoming presidential election in Taiwan, has already been defeated for the populist he is. The election isn’t over, but then again it kind of already is.
Hong Kong has drawn so much attention that Taiwan is looking into asylum avenues, the EU is voicing support for Hong Kong protesters’ demands, and Britain is looking to support not just Hong Kong, but also Taiwan. China, not having learned from the opium wars, has once again been cruel to the little kid in the Far East, oblivious to the anger awakened in his older brother in the West.
Washington is all excited because this week Mueller is scheduled to testify, again, about a report he already handed in. If the report had said enough on its own then there would be no need for him to testify, again. Democrats are all excited, but not as excited as Senator Graham, who plans to launch his own investigation investigation. While Washington is distracted with theatrics of Russians and the “fab four”, a much deeper problem is swelling, one which will not escape Trump’s tenure unchanged: social media.
Social media giants are out of control. One current argument on the table is to make Google’s “index” public.
This “index” is Google’s inside stockpile of information that a “Google search” queries. Right now, it’s on lockdown and no one can access it without going through Google. Making it public would allow anyone to use it—if they know the right code, which code monkeys could learn. And, that’s where the trouble is…
Publicizing Google’s search index would be difficult to prove because it would need a new computer language—or API—to access. What’s to keep Google from making that API language too difficult to use? And, what’s to ensure the same idiots in Washington who tried to ram SOPA & PIPA down everyone’s throats—or wondered if Hillary wiped her server “with a cloth”—would know whether Google is making the API too difficult to use?
It could be done. It would need oversight. It should apply to Yahoo, Microsoft, and any other publicly traded tech giant with a search index. And, it would be a game changer.
According to Bloomberg, Google gets over 90% of all search traffic; Microsoft’s Bing at second place gets under 3%. That’s a lot of power to be in just one place.
While the current thinkers have “thunk” up this as the way to regulate Google under laws governing “public utilities”, there’s another important argument to consider. Google’s search index isn’t an index about Google’s own intellectual property—Google’s search index is an index about private information owned by everyone. So, the real question is whether it should be legal to “index the public”, which is essentially what Google does. If it’s legal to “index the public”, then of course the public should have access to that index, duh.
China’s recent obsession with arresting Canadians is easier to understand and predict if it is seen as an attempt to alienate US allies from the US. Based on this, we can expect mistreatment of other US citizen allies in the future. They did something similar with an Australian back in January. By lashing out at citizens of US allies, China—more than likely—hopes to make those countries regret being friends with the US…
…because that works in Chinese culture’s inside baseball.
Something about Chinese-Confucian culture is obsessed with “the group” and “uniform conformity”. When someone steps “out of line”—whatever the groupthink happens to have decided “the line” is this afternoon—others within that culture instinctively begin to attack that person like hyenas attack an isolated impala in the wild. It’s almost as if they are governed by a hypnotic auto-think. Small charges, snaps, and bites slowly creep in from any and every side until the group kills and devours whoever tried to be different.
This is exactly what China has done to Taiwan’s allies. Most of them caved. Senator Rubio lashed out at El Salvador for abandoning Taiwan last August when the trend became annoyingly obvious. Since it worked with them, maybe China thinks it will work with the English-speaking world.
But, the Chinese only learn “Chinglish” at best, whether with language or with culture. There attempt will only backfire and that will explain the members of the coming alliance that defeats China in the fast-approaching scuffle. And, it will explain the coming alliance that nations just east of China will soon deepen with the English-speaking world, as well as the growing alienation between English-America and Latin-America. But, that won’t be seen for another decade.
Justice Roberts doesn’t believe that the citizenship question in the upcoming census is about voting rights. He’s right, it probably isn’t. A more believable reason might have been to confirm the accuracy of immigrant statistics from other Federal reports. A better census question would have been multiple choice: citizen, green card, other visa, and entry not requiring visa—nothing incriminating about that. Putting the question on a separate form from the rest of the census form would skew the data to protect privacy. But, SCOTUS wouldn’t allow the question as presented for the reason as defended.
We have two big issues with this ruling. First, if census questions are too invasive, people won’t answer them, then the data is less accurate. Second, remember: The Supreme Court always votes in favor of the Court, more than Right or Left politics, more than constitutionalism or idealism. And, as we should expect from hard-working law school grads, supreme justices love to penalize sloppy homework.
If we wanted to know Roberts’s politics, the defense should have provided a better defense. Trump shouldn’t have let his lawyers give lame reasons for relevant questions because the true reasons are good enough: The government wants to know the accuracy of other reports. Now, those other reports will be collected, collaborated, and cross-referenced instead, which might have been a better rout in the first place.
The Democrats enjoyed the younger generation of voters accusing anything and everything of being about racism, even when it wasn’t. It came in handy as a wild carded, one-shot-for-all silver bullet for rebutting opposition to Obama. It helped them get elected under the auspices of fighting a never-ending battle that had to continue. But, when one such young person got elected, it messed with the non-democratic rank-and-file culture of the so-called Democratic party. Now, Pelosi and AOC are in a cat fight. The problem is that people care. It’s not news, it’s just politics as usual. Maybe it’s a nice wake-up call to what is usual in Washington.
Just as usual is the scandalous underbelly of Washington, including Epstein. When he was caught up in scandals with Democrats, he didn’t matter. Now that they can’t keep their underage pimp afloat, the salvage operation in the Washington spin-control department wants to tie Epstein to Trump to at least get some return for their great loss. They’ll have to find someone to replace him now. And, they’d at least like to say the same for Trump, but they can’t.
China has been had. It has been had by Western freedom. It has been had by its own culture’s psychopathology. It has been had by the concept of a promise—something the Chinese can’t understand, let alone keep. It has been had by Marxist propaganda. And, it is still being had by its obsession with power.
British officials are turning their eyes toward Hong Kong. This is a move of revival in the English-speaking world. The English have a conscience. It is more than political smoke-blowing. Britain fully intends to protect the people of Hong Kong. And, they can do it because China has already reneged on a treaty registered with the United Nations.
China has difficulty understanding the concept of a promise. Living fully and wholly by the psychopathology of Gorgias—that all statements are lies and only rhetoric matters—the Chinese truly believe that their promise to not interfere with Hong Kong until 2047 is irrelevant trivia. They truly believe that if the world distrusts China for breaking treaty, it would be the world just looking for ways to be mean to poor, suffering, victimized China. They truly believe that any “distrust” from the West, citing broken promises, would be pure propaganda from any and all, everywhere on Earth.
The British dealt with China for centuries. They must have at least suspected that China would break treaty. In fair honesty, by allowing a fifty year window, they showed high hopes that China would at least be capable of pretending to have a conscience for half a century. If China could lie to the world for fifty years and conceal its spite for any race lacking Han blood—if China could at least pretend to be nice for fifty years—then perhaps Hong Kong would be safe long after 2047. Britain gave China the benefit of the doubt.
But, China didn’t make it fifty years, not even half that.
Call it temptation. Call it the “Tienanmen fix”. China can’t not oppress and boss and dominate. From Beijing, Hong Kong calls, begging, “Oppress me! Oppress me!”
From Xi Jinping’s perspective is one of power. He believes that the Russian Communist downfall of 1989 happened because the Communists didn’t oppress enough. It never occurs to him that people do not overthrow governments that they trust—but to a psychopath, all statements are lies and all protests are propaganda. People would only hate an oppressive government, so they think, because someone told them to.
Hong Kong knows differently. Though they do not have complete self-rule, they do have free speech, free markets, free press, and free religion. To them, China stinks, and not only from the pollution of mismanagement.
Still, China wants to force its embrace upon the free people of Hong Kong. The legal justice system has a term for criminals who force their love on unwilling victims. In that scenario, everyone knows who everyone is.
Like an alcoholic claiming that alcohol is the medicine, China sees voluntary support as a threat—as a lack of power—and that power is the cure for power resisted. China has been had by everyone, its own vices above all else.
