ChrisCam Broadsheet

2568.\\ The Return of the Middle Kingdom

A couple of articles in Asahi, a Japanese newspaper and website, highlight some of the concerns I've had about China's alleged peaceful rise. Combined, the articles sketch a picture of China seeking a return to the time of Emperors and Dynasties with it at the center of the universe.

Be afraid. Although I'm glad to see the world's #2 economy and potent military power is waking up to the emerging threat of China.

First article here: How Japan Should Tackle China's "Peaceful Rise"

Second here: China Seeks to Neutralize Japan-US Security Treaty

Reported by Christo the Elder on June 21, 2010 @ 09:30

 TAGGED AS: America, Australia, China, Economy, India, Japan, Middle Kingdom, Military, Quad, War

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2567.\\ The Coming War With China

The title of this post may also be "Chris Beating a Dead Horse". I've commented so often and with such passion about the looming conflict with China that I have always believed was coming that at this point I feel like I'm just a broken record. A broken record.

There's been a flurry of recent articles supporting the notion that the likelihood of great power conflict between China and America is increasing, not decreasing. The bedrock of the West's approach to China is and has always been that increasing China's integration into the world via economic, political, cultural and military relationships is a good thing. We believe that by 'opening' up China via the WTO, the UN, the G20, the Olympics, the Internet, etc, that we'd reduce the threat of a rising China. Western influences and global influences will guide China to liberalize and join the ranks of the Great Powers as a peaceful nation, so the theory goes.

Frankly it is turning out to be just the opposite. And why wouldn't it? The immutable fact of human nature dictates that the Chinese haven't changed as people over the past 4,000 years so why would we expect them to behave any differently than they did under the Emperors? A few hundred years of being under the Western boot isn't sufficient to alter the character of the Chinese people. They are proud, arrogant, militaristic, self-righteous and believe themselves to be ethnically superior to, well, everyone. Their interest is not in peaceful coexistence, it never has been throughout history. Their interest is in domination and subjugation.

They want war. With America. Don't believe me? Take their own words for it.:

In February, Colonel Meng Xianging promised a "hand-to-hand fight with the U.S." sometime within the next 10 years "when we're strong enough." "We must make them hurt," said Major-General Yang Yi this year, referring to the United States.

And last month, at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, a Chinese flag officer launched a three-minute rant that stunned the 65 or so American officials in the audience. Everything that is right with U.S. relations with China is due to China, said Rear Admiral Guan Youfei. Everything that is wrong is Washington's fault. According to Guan, the United States sees China as an enemy.

A senior American official traveling on Secretary of State Clinton's plane back to the United States said the admiral's comments were "out of step" with the views of China's civilian leaders. U.S. officials at the time also predicted that Beijing would soon welcome Robert Gates on his long-planned trip to China.

They were wrong. On June 3 the Chinese foreign ministry announced that the Defense secretary was in fact not welcome. Gates, who also thought he would travel to Beijing this month, said the turndown was just the military's fault. "Nearly all of the aspects of the relationship between the United States and China are moving forward in a positive direction, with the sole exception of the military-to-military relationship," he said on his way to Singapore. "The PLA is significantly less interested in developing this relationship than the political leadership of the country."

Is that true? "Admiral Guan was representing what all of us think about the United States in our hearts," a senior Chinese official told the Washington Post. "It may not have been politically correct, but it wasn't an accident." Chinese flag officers do not launch into polemical speeches at tightly scripted events, such as the once-a-year Strategic and Economic Dialogue, and it was reckless for American officials to assume, despite everything, that Admiral Guan was speaking only for himself.

If you don't believe Gordon Chang or the Chinese leadership, you can choose to believe other experts: Ed Ross in the Daily Caller, Frank Ching in the China Post, Michael Richardson in the Japan Times, Will Inboden in Foreign Policy, or just about anything Bill Gertz writes in the Washington Times or elsewhere.

Their military is steadily increasing in capability. Their economy is rapidly reaching parity. Their ambitions continue to grow. Their adoption of Western liberalism and enlightenment philosophy hasn't changed in 30 years. We are dangerously deluded to continue on this track of blindly trusting them and disarming ourselves while becoming increasingly indebted to them.

Their opening attack will make Pearl Harbor look like a pinprick. That is, if we detect their attack at all before it is too late.

Reported by Christo the Elder on June 17, 2010 @ 11:14

 TAGGED AS: America, Bill Gertz, China, Economy, Gordon Chang, Military, War

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2566.\\ A Nation Guided by Politics Instead of by Law

Chilling but accurate assessment of the crisis gripping the nation in USA Today. It is, as the author points out, a crisis of faith in our system and our laws.

A legal system cannot demand the faith and fealty of the governed when rules are seen as arbitrary and deceptive. Our leaders have led us not to an economic crisis or an immigration crisis or an environmental crisis or a civil liberties crisis. They have led us to a crisis of faith where citizens no longer believe that laws have any determinant meaning. It is politics, not the law, that appears to drive outcomes -- a self-destructive trend for a nation supposedly defined by the rule of law.

Yeah. It is bad. Full article here.

Reported by Christo the Elder on June 15, 2010 @ 12:19

 TAGGED AS: America, Barack Obama, Crisis, Immigration, Law

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2565.\\ The Competence Void

I like seeing the arrogant and pretentious brought down a few pegs as most Americans do. It is always a funny spectacle when other arrogant and pretentious people do the taking down. In the wake of the ongoing failure to solve any relevant problem in the world today, from generating jobs to spreading freedom to capping an oil well, there has been an increasing chorus of the generally haughty and self-righteous attacking the haughtiest and most self-righteous President in living memory. I think it is fantastic.

This from Dick Morris in The Hill:

America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill.

And this from my other perennial favorite, Peggy Noonan in Saturday's WSJ:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language--"catastrophe," etc.--but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.

Ed Morrissey has a great summation (although he's not much in the haughty and self-righteous category):

That is precisely why we shouldn't have elected a man with no executive experience to the toughest executive job in the world. We need strong leadership, especially in times of crisis, not a man who prefers to vote present rather than lead. And we probably wouldn't have elected Obama or even nominated him this time around if the national media had done half of the job vetting Obama that they did with Sarah Palin

I also love the fact that he gives Noonan the Captain Renault award. But let's not beat her up to badly. She was dazed by the razzle dazzle, that thrill running up the collective legs of the easily persuaded and those susceptible to salesmen. But in the end she shook out of it and is casting a critical eye once again.

Even Bill Maher got it right last June when he awoke to the reality that Barry O just doesn't really, well, DO very much of anything.

But the real destruction comes not from the silly HBO pundits but from the liberal guard in the media. Mort Zuckerman skewered Obama back in January. I commented on it at the time but it is absolutely worth quoting in full here:

He's misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There's the saying, "It's the economy, stupid." He didn't get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn't address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It's now worse than it was. I've now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I've never seen before. It's politically corrupt and it's starting at the top. It's revolting.

Five states got deals on health care--one of them was Harry Reid's. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I've never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It's a bizarre form of political corruption. It's bribery. I suppose they could say, that's the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.

Even that is not the worst part. He could have said, "I know. I promised these things, but let me try to do them one at a time." You want to deal with health care? Fine. Issue No. 1 with health care was the cost. You know I think it was 37 percent or 33 who were worried about coverage. Fine, I wrote an editorial to this effect. Focus on cost-containment first. But he's trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much. This is not leadership.

Obama's ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he's been in office. He's had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him. The fact is he had 49.5 million listeners to first speech on the economy. On Medicare, he had 24 million. He's lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we've been using polls. He's done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.

I don't consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster.

One business leader said to me, "In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines."

I'm very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.

I hope there are changes. I think he's already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn't do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?

He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, "This is it. No changes. Don't give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency." Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

It's very sad. It's really sad.

He's improved America's image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. "We are convinced," he said, "that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned," he said "that he is not strong to support his friends."

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what's happening in Massachusetts.

It's really interesting because he had brilliant, brilliant political instincts during the campaign. I don't know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It's unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can't believe how dismayed people are. That's why he's plunging in the polls.

I can't predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won't be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic.

Dude. When you lose THAT guy? You are fucked.

Then there's always the humor of Slate's Obama Messiah Watch.

Reported by Christo the Elder on June 2, 2010 @ 10:29

 TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Bill Maher, BP, Democrats, Dick Morris, Disaster, Disgust, Malaise, Media, Mort Zuckerman, Oil, Peggy Noonan, Slate

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2564.\\ Controversy In San Francisco Because of Colors

You'd think a liberal place like San Francisco would be open to the celebration of different cultures and colors. Apparently they are, provided that culture isn't American and the colors aren't red white or blue.

On a "Mexican Day" several students at a high school in SSR of California had the temerity to wear American-flag style shirts. Displaying their intolerance for anything that doesn't fit their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration agenda, school administrators forced the kids to leave and then charged them with school absences.

If those administrators attempted to impose their value system in the state of South Carolina on any given day, half the state would have to leave. Flags on shirts everywhere...

"It's just kinda disrespectful that they would do that on this day," said student Victoria Wright. "I mean, we don't go around on 4th of July wearing red white and green and saying 'Viva Mexico,' because that's disrespectful."

One student showed us a Mexican flag belt buckle he wore Wednesday. He disagreed with the way the American flag-wearing kids were treated.

"I think it was kind of going overboard with the suspension, but it's also kind of disrespectful because it's our day," said student Sal Orona.

Uh. It isn't your day. And it isn't a holiday in this country. We don't celebrate the anniversary of an obscure battle in another country. And it is never disrespectful to display Americana in America on any day for whatever reason.

If only the shirts had rainbows on them as well, perhaps the kids would be assessed at being sufficiently cultured and allowed to stay at a their publicly funded school.
Full story here

****UPDATE: Hot Air , Zombie and Michelle (my favorite) have it now

Reported by Christo the Elder on May 6, 2010 @ 08:39

 TAGGED AS: America, Bullshit, Cinco de Mayo, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Intolerance, Liberal, Mexico

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2563.\\ Refreshing

And here I thought all this stuff was meaningless to most people. What could an American possibly object to in this thing?

The Contract from America

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country's sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution

Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Reject Cap & Trade

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words--the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution's meaning. (63.37%) 6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn't restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above" Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork

Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

Reported by Christo the Elder on April 16, 2010 @ 08:23

 TAGGED AS: Constitution, Tea Party

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2562.\\ Thinking Big (And Very Nearsighted)

Awesome Mises Daily up today basically eviscerating current economic policy being foisted on us by people with a self-professed lack of faith in capitalism.

Best bit:

The first thing to appreciate is the power of ideas. And one point that this crisis has conclusively demonstrated is the enduring hold of Keynesian economics. People now forget that Keynesianism didn't work well, even in the 1930s; its short-term focus and its failure to deal with the monetary side of the economy led to inflation and, ultimately, to the miseries of stagflation in the '70s. Keynesianism's failure was then manifest, and it was rightly repudiated. Fiscal and monetary extravagance were then reined in, inflation was painfully brought down, and the economy boomed.

And then comes the next big crisis, and Keynesianism is suddenly respectable again --and back with a vengeance. We are now told that Keynesian solutions are the only solutions. And it's not just Keynesianism, but Keynesianism on a mass (or should I say, crass?) scale: massive fiscal stimulus, regardless of the cost; and loose monetary policy, regardless of the inflationary dangers.

This reminds me of an old joke: Keynes was once giving a lecture and noticed that one of his students had fallen asleep. So Keynes asked him a direct question, which woke him up. The startled student responded: "I'm sorry, Mr. Keynes, I didn't hear the question. But the answer is that we need more stimulus."

One size fits all, basically.

We have been here before. Writing in 1940, Friedrich Hayek gave perhaps the most perceptive critique of Keynesian economics ever mounted:

I cannot help regarding the increasing concentration on short-run effects ... not only as a serious and dangerous intellectual error, but as a betrayal of the main duty of the economist and a grave menace to our civilisation....

It is alarming to see that after we have once gone through the process of developing a systematic account of those forces which in the long run determine prices and production, we are now called upon to scrap it, in order to replace it by the short-sighted philosophy of the business man raised to the dignity of a science. Are we not told that, "since in the long run we are all dead," policy should be guided entirely by short-run considerations? I fear that these believers in the principle of après nous le déluge may get what they have bargained for sooner than they wish.

Then, as now, a spending orgy is not what we need. What is needed is a considered response that addresses the structural problems ailing the economy. The key issue, in essence, is that the economy's financial engine has broken down, and this engine needs to be repaired before the economy can properly recover.

Reported by Christo the Elder on April 9, 2010 @ 09:24

 TAGGED AS: Capitalism, Deficit, Economy, Keynes, Liberals, Market, Socialism, Spending

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2561.\\ The Brooks Way

Sometimes he’s just plain wrong. Sometimes he’s really, really right on about things. This time around I can muster a ‘meh’ for Mr. David Brooks. At least he’s honest about the Democratic blood flowing in his veins.

Best bit:

The essence of America is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.

Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their G.D.P. on health care. We spend 17 percent and are predicted to soon spend 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in innovation, education and everything else. It will not.

With the word security engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”

The second biggest threat to America’s vibrancy is the exploding federal debt. Again, Democrats can utter the words of fiscal restraint, but they don’t feel the passion. This bill is full of gimmicks designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but not to really balance the budget. Democrats did enough to solve their political problem (not looking fiscally reckless) but not enough to solve the genuine problem.

Reported by Christo the Elder on March 24, 2010 @ 12:28

 TAGGED AS: America, David Brooks, Debt, Decline, Deficit, Democracy, Health Care, Health Care Reform, New York Times

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