…Progressive-Democrat style. Here’s Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL):
people who are “making fun of members of Congress” online “should be prosecuted”
Because, she went on, making fun of Congress intimidates Congressmen. In fact, she went on in that vein for more than 40 seconds, just in the recording.
Wow.
And the People’s Republic of China threatens. Hong Kong citizens have been protesting a PRC-endorsed law proposal that would allow Hong Kongese and others resident in or visiting Hong Kong to be extradited to the mainland for trial in the PRC’s government-run court system.
[The PRC’s] government signaled its fraying patience with protesters in Hong Kong after they stormed the city’s legislature, calling the violent turn a direct challenge to Beijing’s authority and suggesting it would have to be answered.
Public statements from Beijing marked a shift in Chinese leaders’ attitude toward the crisis in the semiautonomous territory, indicating they may be forced to step in….
Consistent with that, the PLA’s Hong Kong garrison has begun “emergency handling” exercises.
And this:
The [PRC] government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office called the protests a “blatant challenge to the bottom line of ‘one country, two systems’….”
Hardly. The PRC’s proposed extradition law for Hong Kong is a deliberate threat to the two systems part. Yet, here’s Zhang Jian, Associate Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies:
The suspension of the bill is tantamount to a withdrawal. There is no more room for backing down, no more ground for retreating.
This, of course, is nonsense. Suspension is not withdrawal, it’s a deliberate attempt to keep the extradition bill alive for later, quieter reconsideration and for enactment out of site of the peasantry. There’s plenty of room for continued action: the actual withdrawal of the bill.
Beijing has often appeared tolerant in the face of mass protests in mainland China and Hong Kong—and when passions and attention fade, authorities detain, attack, or otherwise punish ringleaders to prevent a recurrence.
To be sure, that’s a faux patience, and the tanks may well roll across the bridges, just as they rolled into Tiananmen Square not so very long ago when another bunch of uppity peasants demanded freedom.
That’s the title of The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial last Sunday about President Donald Trump’s general foreign policy. They’ve misunderstood it, though, beginning with their subheadline:
With this President, the diplomacy is always personal.
Well, of course it is. Just as all politics are local, so all diplomacy is personal: the principals must know who each other are and the degree to which they can trust each other.
And this:
President Trump believes in personal diplomacy and showmanship above all in foreign policy….
Well, no. Trump sees personal diplomacy and showmanship as necessary early, if not first, steps in foreign policy. Establishment diplomats and policy “experts” are too used to conducting matters quietly and behind the scenes—and they have an unblemished record of failure in serious policy matters in areas, for instance, related to Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and northern Korea. Starting things out in a highly publicized—showman-ized—manner prevents those diplomats from hiding behind their comfortable gentility as they perpetuate their useless chit-chat.
And finally this:
But Mr Trump’s public canoodling with Mr Putin is still a sorry spectacle.
It’s amazing that journalists of the NLMSM—including those of the WSJ—still, after all these years, remain so self-absorbed that they can’t recognize when they’re being trolled.
Nike has signified its agreement with Colin Kaepernick‘s assessment that Nike’s planned Betsy Ross-flagged shoe, intended to be released for Independence Day celebrations, was offensive to some by canceling the release. Kaepernick’s claim was that
he and others felt the Betsy Ross flag is an offensive symbol because of its connection to an era of slavery
Never mind that, were it not for those evil slavers who founded our nation and fought for our independence, we’d still be dealing in slavery and indentured servitude—and guess what would be the lot of current immigrants, legal and illegal.
Kaepernick knows all of this, he’s a K-12 graduate, and he attended college while he played semi-pro football before joining the NFL. He’s just in his current game for his ego now, and out of his desperation to be relevant.
On the other hand, the members of Nike’s management team have not just shown their pretense of ignorance, they’ve demonstrated—at the very least—their cowardice, both individually and as a group.
Arizona’s Republican Governor, Doug Ducey, has taken a proper response, canceling State-originating tax breaks for a planned Nike factory in the State. He went on:
Instead of celebrating American history the week of our nation’s independence, Nike has apparently decided that Betsy Ross is unworthy, and has bowed to the current onslaught of political correctness and historical revisionism,
It seems to me that Nike’s decision to cancel the Betsy Ross flag shoe is offensive to many. Nike should respond by reissuing the shoe at a discount.
Nike won’t. That leaves it up to the rest of us.
All of us should stop doing business with Nike. Its management team has rendered the company useless and a party to racism. All at the behest of a…person…who’s not only not on Nike’s board; he’s not even a shareholder. He’s just an endorser—which means Nike is paying him to make the decision to cancel an Independence Day celebration that honored a key player in our independence struggle.
Our current national flag, as an evolution of the Betsy Ross flag, also is “connected to an era of slavery”—maybe we should cancel it, too. Oh, wait—Kaepernick already is trying for that, with his shameful knee-taking while our national anthem plays and our flag is raised.
None of us should pay any further attention to Kaepernick: his is just another example of cynically manufacturing a racist beef where no beef exists.
James O’Keefe’s Veritas did some undercover work, produced a video of that work, and ran it on YouTube. However, the exposé was of…Alphabet’s Google (which in turn owns YouTube), so YouTube took it down—Alphabet’s censors couldn’t stand the criticism.
The video seems to be back up a few hours later as I write this on the late afternoon of Tuesday.
However.
Alphabet’s attempt to censor, regardless of its (temporary?) failure, is wholly unacceptable, and it demonstrates Alphabet’s (as the owner of Google and YouTube) dishonesty and cowardice.
How is it possible to trust an organization so precious, so self-important, that it can’t even handle criticism of itself?