Tag Archives: China

The Risk Of Upside-Down Priorities

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On Saturday, Red State posted an article with the following headline:

As China’s Blue-Water Navy Continues Massive Expansion, US Navy Secretary Says Climate Is His ‘Top Priority’

Wow. Doesn’t that make you feel well-protected?

The article reports:

Let’s begin with a sobering — to the sane among us — reality.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the U.S. Navy in fleet size sometime around 2020 and now possesses roughly 340 warships, according to the Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report, released in November. Moreover, China’s fleet is expected to grow to 400 ships by 2025.

Meanwhile, the U.S. fleet consists of fewer than 300 ships, with a Pentagon goal of 350 manned ships by 2045, according to the U.S. Navy’s Navigation Plan 2022, released last summer.

Incidentally, a blue-water navy is a maritime force capable of operating globally, essentially across the deep waters of open oceans. While definitions of what actually constitutes such a force vary, the constant is a requirement for the ability to exercise sea control at long range. In other words, the more dominant a nation’s blue-water navy, the better chance that nation has of controlling the world’s strategic sea lanes.

So, what is the U.S. Navy under Joe Biden doing about this sobering reality?

As reported by the Washington Examiner, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro has said, multiple times, that fighting climate change has been one of his biggest priorities since taking office. During a recent trip to the Bahamas to meet with Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis, the two men talked at length about… wait for it… climate change, and what the United States is doing to fight it. Here’s Del Toro:

As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps team has been working on climate and energy security for a long time, and we are accelerating and broadening those efforts.

If they were truly working on energy security, they would be telling the government to resume drilling in America. It would be really nice if the Secretary of the Navy cared about protecting America from foreign aggression. His priorities as he explains them are upside-down.

Dealing With China

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Article: Dealing With China              Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D       harropcrew1@gmail.com 

How the United States has dealt with China over the past few decades is a classic example of not putting America first along with wishful thinking which has put us in very dangerous situation of our own making.  Instead of isolating an evil communist regime, our leaders believed if we gave them special considerations like trade agreements that they would realize that communism is a failed system and become democratic trading partners and respect us as their friends.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.    Instead the Chinese Communist Party outwitted us and  profited immensely from an extremely favorable trade balance in their favor.  We have made a communist country a strong military and economic powerhouse that now exceeds us in many ways.   We may have sold our freedoms and security for cheap consumer goods.    

The question now is what do we do about it and is it too late?  Only time will tell if it is too late, but here are some things we must do.  First, we must recognize and act like they are the threat that they present.  Second, we must re-direct our manufacturing so that we eliminate our dependence on China.   We have an abundance of fossil fuel energy which they do not; so we must return to energy independence.  Stop the move toward windmills, solar panels and electric cars that depend on China for production.   Essential medical supplies and medicines must be made in America.  Third, we must cease allowing China to fund research and send their students to our universities. We must cease investing in their economy instead of ours.  For example, some state governments are investing their pension funds in China through asset managers like BlackRock.    Fourth, we must protect our food supply by stopping communist China from owning our essential agricultural land and food processing facilities (e.g. Smithfield Foods).   China currently owns an estimated 400,000 acres of agricultural land some of it located close to military bases.  Allowing a communist regime to control part of our food supply is absolute lunacy.   Fifth, the fentanyl poisoning of Americans from Chinese manufactured chemicals  processed by the Mexican drug cartels is killing over 100,000 Americans per year which is more than the death toll of the Korean War(36,574) and Vietnam War(58,148) combined.  And this is every year!  Why are we putting up with this?  Would we retaliate if China was killing 100,000 Americans with weapons?  What we should do is inform China that if the shipment of their chemicals to Mexico is not stopped we will stop all shipments of American coal (13 million tons) and food products (such as soy beans 14 million tons) to China. This will get their attention. 

The above represent some of the things that need to be done if we are serious about dealing with the threat from communist China.  Why are we not taking these and similar actions?  Try greed.   We have funded the growth of the China threat and the profits made by big corporations (and corrupt polititians) keep this going and will ultimately   result in the destruction of America.   It is clear that the weak and corrupt Biden administration will do nothing.   The only hope is that  Republicans will have the courage to take action before it is too late.   Let’s hope so for ourselves, children and grandchildren. 

 

Destroying Our Children On Social Media

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Most children over the age of twelve have access to TikTok. I wonder how many of their parents are actually paying attention to what is on that site.

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article written by a woman  in her 30’s who posed as a 14-year-old boy on TikTok to see what would show up for her to view. The results were frightening.

The article reports:

My aim wasn’t to use Jayden’s profile to interact with other people online but rather just to see what sort of content the algorithm fed him if he was completely passive.

Within seconds of opening TikTok and YouTube as him, I was bombarded with a dizzying stream of videos of girls lip-syncing and twerking in mini-shorts.

After about a minute, things took a darker turn.

Mega influencers like stuntman-turned-boxer Logan Paul, 27, started popping up.

Paul stars in videos alongside the Sidemen, a popular British YouTube group known for offensive content — one member faced a backlash for his “rape face” video series in 2015.

In their “Sidemen Tinder in Real Life” YouTube series, the men often talk graphically to the women who are invited to their studio to make a potential love connection.

But instead of finding Mr. Right, the girls are often pummeled with insults about their physical appearance.

The most disturbing video I came across on TikTok, however, featured slow-motion footage of a boy, likely around Jayden’s age, in a classroom standing over a girl and swinging his closed fist toward her face as she recoiled.

Jayden was fed another TikTok video stamped with title “Calling my girlfriend the ‘B’ word for her reaction” featuring a young guy repeatedly barking the epithet at his significant other in the hopes of infuriating her for laughs.

Obviously this is not entertainment.

It is interesting to know that in China, the youth version of TikTok offers educational content including “novel and interesting popular science experiments, exhibitions in museums and galleries, beautiful scenery across the country, explanations of historical knowledge, and so on,” according to ByteDance. (article here) China also limits the amount of time its children spend on social media. What is the end goal of those who are feeding garbage to America’s children?

The Trojan Horse In American Ports

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Many Americans are slowly waking up to the threat to America posed by China. Russia openly stated, “We will bury you,” but China is much more subtle. They are slowly undermining us economically, socially, and culturally. The amount of industrial espionage, copyright violations, and spying that has been going on right under our noses is frightening. Every Chinese exchange student in America has ties to the communist government or they wouldn’t be here. China has established Chinese police departments in some of our major cities to keep watch over its citizens in this country (article here).

On Monday, Townhall posted an article about China’s presence at American ports.

The article reports:

The highly visible but generally ignored ship-to-shore cranes at American ports are responsible for loading and unloading tens of millions of shipping containers each year. In addition to being a critical component of American supply chains, they’re also used in some cases by the U.S. military. 

Some of these cranes are innocuous, but an estimated 80 percent of ship-to-shore cranes operating at U.S. ports are made by ZPMC, a China-based manufacturer, leading to rising concern among American defense and national security personnel that have compared the cranes to a “Trojan horse,” according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ reports that the ZPMC cranes made by the Chinese company are “comparably well-made and inexpensive” compared to other cranes produced by other manufacturers, but “they contain sophisticated sensors that can register and track the provenance and destination of containers, prompting concerns that China could capture information about materiel being shipped in or out of the country to support U.S. military operations around the world.”

The article also notes:

The WSJ report quoted the former cybersecurity lead at the port of Houston who warned “[i]t wouldn’t be hard for an attacker to disable one sensor on a crane and prevent the crane from moving” because the “systems aren’t designed for security, they are designed for operations.”

Among other worries enumerated in the report, some fear that the ZPMC cranes could, in addition to being shut down by an outside attacker or tracking what is moving in and out of U.S. ports, be turned into sabotage devices to cripple American ports without a foe needing to float its navy into U.S. waters.

We are definitely paying the price for relying on China for cheap manufactured goods.

How Much Money Does China Funnel Into Congress Every Year?

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I don’t have concrete information that China funnels money into Congress; however, that is the only logical explanation for some of the decisions that Congress makes.

On Tuesday, Breitbart reported the following:

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s efforts to block China from buying up farmland in her state were thwarted this week when a supermajority of state Senators rejected her proposal.

As Breitbart News previously reported, Noem had proposed a bill that would “create a state-level version of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)” in order to curtail foreign Chinese entities from buying agricultural land in her state:

Currently, CFIUS is a federal board that approves or disapproves of foreign entities engaging in major U.S. transactions. Noem’s proposal would establish a CFIUS-South Dakota, or CFIUS-SD, which would review proposed transactions in the state where foreign entities including but not limited to Chinese entities seek to purchase land. The board, if established — which would require the legislature to pass Noem’s proposal — could block such land sales as it sees fit.

Essentially, Senate Bill 185 would have granted the South Dakota governor the power to unilaterally veto any purchase reviewed by the panel. The state senate rejected the bill on Tuesday with an 11-23 vote.

“The bill faced opposition from nearly every agriculture industry group in committee testimony. But the proposal’s supporters on the Senate floor said any flaws would be rectified before it becomes law,” reported South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB).

The article concludes:

“What’s been interesting about the debate so far on this bill I’m proposing with help from a couple legislators,” she continued, “is that the opposition has not come to the table and given us other solutions and other things they think would work that would give us this kind of accountability and make sure that we have a review of land that’s purchased in South Dakota. They haven’t given us articulated reasons as to why they’re opposed to the bill, so for me, this is an issue the public has brought to me for many, many months. They care about this.”

Opposition to this bill makes no sense–letting a country that seeks to defeat us control the land that supplies our food is insanity. Controlling the food supply controls the population. That is a political tool of a tyrant.

Color Me Skeptical

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Today, NewsMax posted an article about some recent comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

The article reports:

China on Monday said more than 10 U.S. high-altitude balloons have flown in its airspace during the past year without its permission, following Washington’s accusation that Beijing operates a fleet of surveillance balloons around the world.

The Chinese allegation comes after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had crossed from Alaska to South Carolina, sparking a new crisis in bilateral relations that have spiraled to their lowest level in decades.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details about the alleged U.S. balloons, how they had been dealt with or whether they had government or military links.

I suspect I could use that statement to fertilize my garden! How long would a U.S. high altitude balloon last over the skies of China? Do you really think that we would not have heard about incidences of spying on China via balloon before this?

The article concludes:

The Chinese balloon shot down by the U.S. was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries, the Biden administration declared Thursday, citing imagery from American U-2 spy planes.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following the alleged Chinese spy balloon, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.

The United States has since placed economic restrictions on six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its response to the incident. The U.S. House of Representatives also voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”

Wang, the Chinese spokesperson, repeated China’s dismissal of such claims, saying, “the frequent firing of advanced missiles by the U.S. to shoot down the objects is an overreaction of overexertion.”

At this point in history, is there a government on earth that is actually telling the truth about anything?

Why Is It Still Up There?

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How long do you think an American spy balloon would last over the mainland of China? China has had one sitting over the middle of America for a couple of days now.

On Friday, PJ Media reported:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given the Biden administration’s response to President Xi Jinping and China for their brazenly illegal act of sending a balloon over U.S. territory to spy on the United States.

How do we know it’s a spy balloon? We don’t have to know. We can, should, and must assume that’s what it’s doing.

Blinken, along with his advisors Wynken and Nod, has come up with a brilliant riposte to this Chinese transgression. The United States will deny China the pleasure and honor of hosting the U.S. secretary of state this week as planned.

It’s the well-practiced “comfy chair” response to China. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to impress President Xi. In fact, Xi couldn’t care less if Blinken comes to Beijing or not. He must be watching the diplomatic byplay with amusement.

Blinken and one of his deputies spoke with the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday night, and on Friday morning, he told China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, that the balloon’s course was a violation of sovereignty and “unacceptable,” according to a State Department official.

Oh, dear! Did ya hear that Xi-man? It’s “unacceptable” to fly your aircraft over U.S. territory.

The New York Times reported:

Beijing had sought to defuse tensions with Washington on Friday over the balloon, expressing its regret over the incident, and saying the balloon was for civilian research and had “deviated far from its planned course.”

The explanation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry came after Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had detected a balloon, “most certainly launched by the People’s Republic of China,” over Montana, which is home to about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

The article at PJ Media notes:

The experts at The Drive’s The War Zone disagree that there’s no added benefit to floating a balloon above U.S. military installations: “The idea that a terrestrial aerial platform in close proximity and floating for long periods above major military installations and other sensitive locales is not significantly more of a threat than what can be collected by satellites in orbit is a debatable claim.”

Don’t shoot it down–find a way to make a small hole in the balloon so that it floats gently to the ground, and then reverse engineer whatever electronics it is carrying.

 

Where Do The Parts For Green Energy Come From?

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On Sunday, Breitbart reported that Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives want to reverse President Biden’s tariff waivers for suspected Chinese companies that are reportedly funneling their solar panels through other countries to evade United States trade rules.

The article notes:

In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China or by Chinese companies but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to evade tariffs.

The tariff moratorium came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam to specifically evade U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.

Already, about 80 percent of solar panels installed in the U.S. are made in China or by Chinese companies.

The article concludes:

Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across America’s working and middle-class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show.

A recent study from economists at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, for instance, finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about 10 million American jobs while boosting domestic output.

I have very mixed emotions on tariffs. I will concede that tariffs are probably needed on the large amount of Chinese goods that make their way into America. However, looking at history, we can’t ignore the impact of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised the United States’s already high tariff rates. That tariff contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. It planted the seeds for the Great Depression. The world’s economy is not in a really good place right now, and we need to consider carefully the impact of any tariff we pass.

The Problems With Depending On China For Manufacturing

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On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the slowdown in America of solar installations in the third quarter.

The article reports:

U.S. solar installations fell in the third quarter of 2022 and are projected to fall by nearly 25% in comparison to 2021 after the Biden administration began blocking Chinese solar imports from Xinjiang, a region where Uyghur Muslims are allegedly being forced to work, according to a Tuesday report.

The U.S. installed 4.6 GW of solar capacity in the third quarter of 2022, a 17% decrease from 2021’s third quarter and a 2% decrease from the second quarter of 2022 as the government continues to impound Chinese solar panel products under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), according to a Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie report. The act, which Congress passed in December 2021, bans imports from Xinjiang due to the allegations that Uyghurs are forced to manufacture polysilicon, a key input in solar panels, exacerbating supply chain constraints and meaning that the total number of solar installations in 2022 is projected to decline by 23% compared to 2021 levels.

The article notes:

China dominates solar panel manufacturing and is responsible for 80% of polysilicon production, according to an International Energy Agency report. In June, President Joe Biden waived tariffs designed to protect domestic businesses from unfair competition in order to get more Chinese solar panels on the market and accelerate his “clean energy” transition.

The Biden administration wants to generate all of the country’s electricity from green energy, such as solar or wind power, by 2035, up from just 40% in 2020. To achieve this objective, the yearly rate of solar installations may need to more than double, according to the Energy Department.

Dependency on green energy is similar to the search for the perpetual motion machine. There may actually be an answer in nuclear fusion, but we are not there yet. Countries like Iceland make use of geothermal energy very successfully, but they also live on top of the volcanoes that produce that energy. I am not sure I like that trade-off.

Our Role Model?

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On November 27th, I posted an article reporting that Klaus Schwab recently stated that China Will Be a ‘Role Model’ in the ‘Systemic Transformation’ of the World. I really don’t like the idea of China as a role model. Currently Chinese protestors are being beaten in the streets, and many will be jailed and tortured for their protesting. The protests began in response to the draconian lockdowns (supposedly due to Covid) that resulted in people in an apartment fire dying because they were locked into their apartment building.

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following:

Uyghur activists are demanding that the Biden administration extract details from China about the fire that the Chinese government says killed 10 people trapped in a building, alleging that the true number of deaths is far higher due to China’s coronavirus lockdowns.

“The Chinese government officially recorded 10 deaths,” said Salih Hudayar, who heads a human rights group focused on China’s genocide of the ethnic minority group. “Photos suggest the number of Uyghurs slain was much higher.”

Social media posts and photos place the death toll at 44, said Hudayar, who on Monday led a protest outside the State Department in Washington, D.C. Residents reportedly couldn’t escape their homes because their doors were bolted and barred for quarantine. Barricades at the building prevented fire trucks from getting close enough to fight the fire—video of the incident shows firefighters spraying water that failed to even reach the building. Huyadar said it took hours for help to arrive.

“Residents stated firefighters arrived three hours after the fire began,” Hudayar said.

The deaths have sparked unrest across the country, with residents calling for the easing of restrictions and the resignation of President Xi Jinping. Chinese authorities have tried to clamp down on the protests, searching residents’ phones in Beijing and Shanghai for use of illegal messaging apps. Chinese bots on Twitter, meanwhile, tweeted pornographic content to drown out posts about the protests and criticism of Xi.

It takes a lot of courage to protest in China. Free speech is not a way of life. Prison and torture are likely to be the results of protesting. China is not a role model we want to follow.

This Is Not A Happy Thought

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

WEF’s Klaus Schwab Says China Will Be a ‘Role Model’ in the ‘Systemic Transformation’ of the World

China, the country that imprisons Uighurs, uses slave labor, puts anyone who disagrees with the government in jail, uses an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scale to control its population, etc., is the country Schwab thinks we should emulate.

The article quotes Klaus Schwab:

“I respect China’s achievements, which are tremendous over the last over 40 years, I think it’s a role model for many countries,” the Davos chief said, adding that while he believes countries should be able to choose the system they prefer to live under, the “Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries.”

“I look very much forward to having a strong Chinese voice in Davos to explain even better to the world what it means to see the party Congress which laid down the principles of the policy [and] what it really means for global collaboration and for global development,” Schwab added.

He concluded by saying that he has taken “great satisfaction” in seeing the European Union become more “unified” in its thinking following the Chinese virus and the war in Ukraine and that this could lead to deeper ties between Brussels and Beijing.

“I’m very pleased that we speak not only about Chinese-U.S. relations but also again about European-Chinese relations, and I feel despite all the question marks and to a certain extent cautious approach which we see in Europe, I think that very close ties can be established again between China and Europe because there’s such an interwoven economy.”

The article concludes:

China also seems to be in broad agreement with the World Economic Forum on using the issue of climate change to usher in radical changes.

For example, at this year’s WEF summit in Davos, the president of the Alibaba Group Chinese tech giant, J. Michael Evans said the firm, which like all other companies in Communist China is closely linked to the state, will be seeking to implement an “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor the behaviour of individuals in terms of their supposed environmental impact.

“We are developing through technology the ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint… where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform,” Evans said.

It’s time for Americans to wake up. We need to elect people who will stand firm to protect our freedom. It is obvious that many of the world leaders are moving away from freedom to embrace tyranny. We need not to be part of that.

Giving Away Important Technology

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General is investigating why the Biden administration gave promising green energy technology to China instead of creating manufacturing jobs in America.

The article reports:

The Department of Energy’s Inspector General is reviewing why the Joe Biden administration gave promising battery technology, developed by taxpayer dollars, to a Chinese company instead of making the batteries in the U.S.

China is now reportedly building one of the largest battery grids in the world using the technology, which could store huge amounts of solar energy without degrading over time or requiring lithium, mitigating a major environmental impact of current green technology that ends up in landfills.

The article continues:

In 2021, there was an “illicit Department of Energy (DOE) transfer of a fifteen million dollar, taxpayer-funded advanced battery technology to China,” Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) wrote in a letter to the DOE’s internal watchdog.

The company that received the license “plainly stated on their official website that they planned to manufacture the batteries in China,” even though the license included “a requirement that the batteries be ‘substantially manufactured’ in the U.S. As these stipulations were continuously violated, DOE never raised any concern,” they wrote.

“We are concerned that this is an overt dereliction of duty by DOE, and that this case may be emblematic of a department that routinely and flippantly permits government-funded technology to be transferred to China,” the senators concluded.

The article explains exactly what happened:

In 2017, Yang (Gary Yang, one of the scientists who helped develop the technology, so that he could commercialize it) — an American citizen who was born in China — obtained a sublicense from the DOE to allow a Chinese firm to make the batteries. In 2021, he transferred the license outright to a Dutch company called Vanadis Power, which said it would make the batteries in China but eventually move production to Europe to comply with European rules.

America had those rules too, but seemed less strict about enforcing them. On July 7, 2021, UniEnergy emailed a government manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to request approval to transfer the license to Vanadis, and within 90 minutes, the government granted approval, even though Vanadis’ website said it would make the batteries in China.

Unnamed DOE officials told NPR they often rely on “good faith disclosures” — in other words, the honor system.

I would love to see a list of Americans who are in some way involved in the finances of the Chinese company involved.

The Inflation Reduction Act

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The Inflation Reduction Act has passed through Congress and will undoubtedly be signed into law by President Biden by the time you read this. So what exactly does this law do? Well, for starters it does not reduce inflation and it will not impact the climate. However, it will help China’s economy (they dominate the green energy field) and it will let Democrats celebrate that they passed something through Congress. It will also raise the cost of living for all Americans in the form of increased energy costs and some tax increases.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

An analysis by the CBO estimates those earning less than $400,000 — the group on which Biden promised not to raise taxes — will pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade as a result of the Democrat-pushed $740 billion package, which also sets aside $80 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents.

The bill has yet to be scored in its entirety by the CBO — which typically gives each piece of legislation a price tag before it is voted on — but the agency scored the impact of the IRS expansion on middle-class taxpayers on Aug. 12 after a provision from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) sought to exempt those making under $400,000 from increased IRS scrutiny.

Crapo’s proposed amendment would have kept those taxpayers from being targeted by the new IRS hires, but his provision was shot down 51-50 in the bill passed by the Senate last week.

On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported the following:

Democrats quickly gave up on the Inflation Reduction Act, since they couldn’t sell the idea that another $700+ billion in deficit spending would somehow reduce inflation. So now it is alleged to be a climate control act, instead.

But the bill won’t affect the climate any more than it would have reduced inflation. Even if you assume the UN’s inflated estimate of the impact of CO2 emissions on global warming, the bill’s impact is nil:

[W]e get somewhere between 0.028 and 0.0009°F reduction in temperature by 2100 for about 400 billion dollars in climate spending contained in the bill.

But the oceans will stop rising! Which, by the way, they have been doing for the last 15,000 or so years.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

So the Democrats’ prize legislation is an exercise in futility. Unless, of course, you are one of the many Democratic Party constituents who will be cashing the checks that add up to more than $700 billion, with a little over half ostensibly going to benefit the climate.

The purpose here is to buy votes, obviously, and the Democratic Party press is ecstatic over the idea that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer finally have a “win” to brag about. But I wonder. I haven’t seen much evidence that the Democrats’ deficit spending extravaganzas are especially popular outside the precincts of those who cash the checks. (And, by the way, the number one beneficiary of this particular $700 billion will be the Communist Chinese, who dominate “green” energy.) My guess is that most Americans have caught on to the Democrats’ game, and understand that this legislation will no more dictate the Earth’s climate than it will bring our crippling inflation under control.

That’s where we are, folks.

Biting The Hand That Feeds You

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This article is not going to be about the need for new Republican leadership in Congress. It is going to be about what the current leadership has done to undermine the American middle class worker.

On Monday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the semiconductor bill passed by Congress that is supposed to help America manufacture the computer chips for cars and other electronic devices.

The article notes:

Republicans are all unanimous in their opposition to the reconciliation “Build Back Better” bill, but Mitch McConnell and 16 other Senate Republicans voted for the mini BBB bill, dumping billions of dollars into companies that have created a brain gain for China’s trade theft to drain our supply chains. Not only did McConnell agree to the bill despite the refusal of Democrats to entertain amendments ensuring that the jobs stay in America, but now these same companies are turning around and demanding more foreign workers to hire.

“In the near-term, the U.S. educational system does not produce enough Americans with the required qualifications to meet the demand of companies, not just in the semiconductor industry, but across the technical sector,” the HR officers of nine semiconductor companies wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. The nine companies were: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Ampere Computing; ASML US; Broadcom Inc.; Americas Global Foundries; Infineon Technologies; Americas Corp.; Intel Corporation; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Maybe we should fix our educational system instead of hiring foreign workers. However, blaming our educational system is a red herring. The problem is that foreign workers do not demand the salaries and benefits that American workers demand, thus increasing the profit margin of the companies involved.

The article notes:

Massive corporations lobbying for endless corporate welfare along with visa pork is what has demographically gerrymandered the American worker out of entire industries and what has ultimately led to China’s gain and our drain. The pipeline begins with F-1 student visas. In the case of foreign students, it’s really the god of public education, which is being subsidized happily by the Chinese. The universities get cash from the Chinese government, while the Chinese get operatives and intelligence officers into the country to work in academic fields and occupations. The rest of the American people lose. We bring in roughly 369,548 Chinese foreign students a year, together with 80,000 more on immigrant visas. In other words, there are about as many Chinese students in the U.S. as the entire university enrollment in the state of Maryland.

Noted right-wing outlet CNN reported in 2019, “The sheer size of the Chinese student population at U.S. universities presents a major challenge for law enforcement and intelligence agencies tasked with striking the necessary balance between protecting America’s open academic environment and mitigating the risk to national security.” Yet these tech companies think we are not bringing in enough Chinese immigrants. The director of national intelligence warned, “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.”

The article concludes:

Indeed, corporate welfare mixed with endless visa pork has destroyed our sovereignty as citizens and has sold us out to transnational corporations that now have us over the barrel. Naturally, Congress will aggravate the very variables that got us into this mess.

This is only one example of the reason we need to drain the Washington swamp.

Quote Of The Week

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The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was a disgrace, but I wonder if the Biden administration (yes, I think they all knew it was going to happen) thought about how the raid would play around the world.

Breitbart reported the following on Tuesday:

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele criticized the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-A-Lago on Monday in a statement posted by Bukele’s official Twitter account, the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE reported.

This is the tweet:

I think that is a very good question.

The article at Breitbart reports:

Bukele’s administration (2019-present) maintained friendly diplomatic relations with that of Trump during his presidency (2017-2021), Agencia EFE recalled on Monday, writing:

The Government of President Bukele was close to the Administration of former President Trump and the Salvadoran president maintained a close relationship with his ambassador -at the time- in Salvadoran territory, Ronald Johnson.

However, El Salvador’s relationship with the United States changed with the arrival of President Joe Biden and is currently tense due to some decisions made by Bukele that have been criticized by the Biden Administration.

The article concludes:

The U.S. State Department released a list on May 17, 2021, that labeled 17 Central American politicians, including current and former members of Bukele’s administration, as “corrupt.” The action seemingly prompted El Salvador’s congress to ratify a 2019 cooperation agreement with China — one of Washington’s top foes — the next day. El Salvador’s Congress ratified an economic cooperation agreement with Beijing on May 18, 2021, that was originally signed in 2019. The deal called for China’s government to invest $62 million in various infrastructure projects across El Salvador, including a water purification plant.

Bukele and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro both issued public statements in support of U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan on February 2. The two leaders expressed hope that Rogan would continue fighting for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech,” respectively, in America amid increased scrutiny of his podcasts from establishment media outlets.

And those are only some of the diplomatic accomplishments of the Biden administration.

It’s Long Past Time To Reconsider Our Relationship With China

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The Daily Wire recently posted an article about organ donations in China.

The article reports:

Dr. Enver Tohti, a former physician in China, remembers the day with horror. The whistleblower said his chief surgeon approached him and asked, “Do you want to do something wild?” The surgeon then took Dr. Tohti and other medical professionals to the site of a public execution, pointed to one of the criminals, and told him, “As quick as possible, remove the liver and two kidneys.” 

“Then, I saw he was alive,” Dr. Tohti, who is now an Uber driver in London, recently told Vice TV. 

Stories of China harvesting organs from live “donors” have proliferated for decades, but a new and credible scholarly article has exposed concrete evidence that China has engaged in the gruesome practice. Researchers Matthew P. Robertson of Australia and Jacob Lavee of Israel combed through 2,838 papers on Chinese organ transplantation published in medical journals, covering prisoner organ donations between 1980 and 2015. They published their findings on April 4 in an article titled “Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China,” in the American Journal of Transplantation, a peer-reviewed journal.

The article continues:

Robertson told me it is important that the media not misreport their data about live organ transplants. “It’s not that there were only 71 of this sort,” he said. “It’s 71 that we found.” 

He and his co-author are almost certainly undercounting the incidences when CCP officials killed prisoners by removing their beating hearts, because they counted only those officially documented in medical journals. “We don’t know how many transplants actually end up in a medical paper,” said Robertson. “It could be one in 100; it could be one in 1,000; it could be 1 in 10.” 

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but estimates abound — and none of the numbers add up. In 2019, the China Tribunal found that Chinese physicians likely performed 60,000 to 90,000 organ transplants a year from 2000 to 2014, but the number of eligible organ donors registered in 2017 numbered only 5,146. Another estimate places the number of organs taken from Falun Gong practitioners at 41,500 over a five-year period. For his part, Robertson said once Chinese Communist Party officials perfected the process, they employed this form of organ removal “probably with all heart transplants” in the nation.

The article concludes:

These allegations also illustrate the legacy media’s perpetually favorable coverage of the People’s Republic of China. “China used to harvest organs from prisoners. Under pressure, that practice is finally ending,” The Washington Post told its readers in 2017. “China vows to battle corruption in organ harvesting,” reported the Associated Press a year earlier. But human rights attorney Hamid Sabi told the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 that forced organ harvesting in China “continues today.” 

Such silence makes it all the more important for Western media outlets to cover these atrocities. “China and their advocates will do everything they can to belittle or discredit” such findings, said Andrew Bremberg, a former ambassador and now CEO of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “And all too often, people in the U.S. and the West will do their best to ignore” them. 

But in order for such human rights abuses to end, the West must act. Thanks to Robertson and Lavee’s research, some of the doctors who took part in China’s forced organ harvesting are now known, Bremberg said. “But we don’t know all of their relationships with U.S. or other Western-based hospitals or universities, or whether they collaborate or publish with other Western academics.”

A bipartisan collection of legislators — Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Chris Coons (D-DE) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) — introduced the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act last March. The bill would allow U.S. officials to identify and sanction those involved in organ harvesting, including revoking their passports. 

“It’s past time to hold Beijing accountable for these heinous acts,” said Sen. Cotton.

This is not an acceptable practice and needs to be addressed. No country engaged in the practice of live organ harvesting should be allowed to trade on any world markets. The only way to end this ghoulish practice is to hit China in the pocketbook.

Who Wins In The War On Coal?

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the war on coal and natural gas that is being waged by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Oil is king when it comes to energy policy, but coal and natural gas are just as important. In the case of all three fossil fuels, Western governments have engaged in an all-out war on exploration, production, and generation, banned Russia’s exports of those products, and then gave a monopoly to China, inducing the worst possible outcome for the American consumer and our national security.

Despite the two-decade war on coal by the climate Nazis, coal is still the largest source of electricity around the globe and is the second-largest source of energy in general. In the U.S., coal was once king, composing roughly half of our electricity source just 15 years ago, but has dropped precipitously because of the natural gas boom and because of destructive eco policies. Yet it still accounts for 21% of our electricity source, so shocks to the system are going to harm American consumers.

The article includes the following chart showing the rise in the price of thermal coal:

So who is making money on the increase?

The article notes:

…Given that coal accounts for 35% of global electricity use and Europe gets 70% of its coal from Russia, the coal crisis is now worse than the oil crisis. And guess who stands to benefit? China, of course. Thanks to the disdain for our own coal by our own politicians, the evil communist regime is now the global champion of coal production and exports.

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but the environmentalists are not willing to let us produce coal. Instead other countries use the same amount of coal as they would if we produced it, except it’s not from us.

The article includes the following chart showing the changes in coal production:

The article concludes:

Between the war on leasing and restrictions on fracking, transportation, pipelines, and export terminals, this administration is stifling the cleanest, most efficient fuel that could lower prices of electricity and serve as a bulwark against China and Russia. Thus, LNG prices remain unnaturally high because the climate Nazis would rather we feel the pain than actually end dependence on bad actors.

Much as with COVID, where we saw a government that cried over the human death toll but downright declared war on anyone who would treat the virus early, those who complain about the energy crisis are the ones inducing it. Crushing the American consumer is not a bug of their plan, it is the primary feature, greasing the skids for the next step in the “Great Reset.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

 

 

 

This Could Easily Crash The American Economy

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In explaining why oil is traded in American dollars, Quora reports the following history:

Allegedly, In a series of meetings, the United States — represented by then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — and the Saudi royal family made an agreement. The United States would offer military protection for Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, and in return the Saudi’s would price their oil sales exclusively in United States dollars (in other words, the Saudis were to refuse all other currencies, except the U.S. dollar, as payment for their oil exports). By 1975, all of the oil-producing nations of OPEC had agreed to price their oil in dollars and to invest surplus oil proceeds in U.S. government debt securities in exchange for similar offers by the U.S.

That agreement has propped up the American dollar during Washington’s wild spending binges. It has allowed America to create the massive debt we now have without going bankrupt. Just for the record, high inflation makes it easier to pay off that debt.

Yesterday Yahoo News posted an article that is not good news for the future of the American dollar.

The article reports:

Saudi and Chinese officials are in talks to price some of the Gulf nation’s oil sales in yuan rather than dollars or euros, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The two nations have intermittently discussed the matter for six years, but talks have reportedly stepped up in 2022, with Riyadh disgruntled over the United States’ nuclear negotiations with Iran and its lack of backing for Saudi Arabia’s military operation in neighboring Yemen.

Nearly 80 percent of global oil sales are priced in dollars, and since the mid-1970s the Saudis have exclusively used the dollar for oil trading as part of a security agreement with the U.S. government, according to the Journal.

The talks are the latest in an ongoing effort by Beijing both to make its currency tradeable in international oil markets and strengthen its relationship with the Saudis specifically. China previously aided Riyadh in construction of ballistic missiles and consultation on nuclear power.

Conversely, the Saudi-U.S. relationship has been increasingly frayed in recent years. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman initially put forth a public image as a reformer, liberalizing the country’s policies on women’s rights and criminal justice.

However, the 2018 assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been catastrophic for both the crown prince’s public relations offensive and relations with Washington. The rift intensified after President Biden, who has said the assassination should make the kingdom a “pariah,” took office.

During the same period, China’s economic relationship to Saudi Arabia has grown closer, with the kingdom providing 1.76 million barrels of oil a day to the country in 2021, according to the Journal, citing China’s General Administration of Customs. While the country plans to maintain the dollar for the majority of its oil trading, a shift by the Saudis could create a domino effect for China’s other major oil suppliers, such as Russia, Angola and Iraq.

I am not a financial expert and would not presume to tell anyone what a safe investment would be for the future, but I can say that this is not good news for the American economy.

The Story Behind The Story

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On Monday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article with a rather different viewpoint on the origins and purpose of the current war in Ukraine. It is a long, involved article, so I suggest you follow the link to read the entire article. I will try to provide some  highlights.

The article notes:

Current CIA Director William “Bill” Burns was the former ambassador to Russia and Jordan.  Bill Burns had a 33-year career at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic presidents and speaks fluent Russian. If the people in the background of Joe Biden wanted an intelligence operative to trigger a specific result from Russia, there’s no one more strategically perfect for the job than CIA Director Bill Burns.

The article by Beinart (Peter Beinart on substack {SEE HERE}) is mainly focused on pointing out the irreconcilable nature of Joe Biden implying Ukraine could join NATO, while his own CIA Director has a history of giving serious warnings emphasizing the “brightest of all red lines” about that specific point.

[…]  “Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”

On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” (read more)

The article reports the following:

The CIA Director is crystal clear that Russia would be seriously triggered about any prospect of Ukraine entering NATO.

Yet, in December of 2021, the exact same time when U.S. backchannel intelligence was being shared with China about Russian troop movements on the border with Ukraine, Joe Biden was telling Ukraine that membership in NATO was in their hands.

The war in Ukraine now can be conveniently blamed for economic woes, the high price of gasoline, the empty supermarket shelves, other supply chain problems, etc.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

Accidental Or Intentional ?

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The way things are going here, the difference between a conspiracy theory and the news is about six weeks.

On Friday, The Patriot Daily Wire reported that prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Biden administration had sought help from China to prevent that invasion. In itself, that is not a problem, but a look at the bigger picture illustrates something that is a problem.

The article reports:

In hopes of securing assistance in deterring a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration was reduced to providing China with military intelligence that Beijing in turn gave to Russia.

U.S. officials learned in December that China had provided American intelligence on Russian military activity to Moscow, The New York Times reported.

American officials believed that if any world leader could prove capable of convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin to rethink his invasion plans, it was Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Russia and China have strengthened their ties in recent years.

The Biden administration had sought to convince China that its international image would be damaged by a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In a November meeting with Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang, American officials said the harsh economic sanctions Russia would incur would hurt the Chinese economy as well.

Successive attempts to influence Qin against Russia proved unsuccessful, with Qin asserting that Russia had legitimate security concerns in the region.

American officials also shared intelligence with the Chinese showing the Russian military buildup around Ukraine.

In addition to providing the information to the Kremlin, American officials believe China told Russia that the U.S. was attempting to sow discord between the two nations and pledged not to interfere in Russia’s plans in Ukraine.

We are about to find out how useless NATO and the United Nations really are. Why are we funding these organizations?

 

This Is Not Going To Help Me Sleep Nights!

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On Thursday, NewsMax reported that China, Russia and Iran will hold joint naval drills on Friday.

The article reports:

The “2022 Marine Security Belt” exercise will take place in the north of the Indian Ocean and is the third joint naval drill between the three countries, Mostafa Tajoldin added.

Since coming to office last June, Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi has pursued a “look east” policy to deepen ties with China and Russia. Tehran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in September, a central Asian security body led by Beijing and Moscow.

…Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited China last week and Iran’s president was meeting his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Thursday.

China, Russia and Iran started joint naval drills in 2019, and will continue them in the future, Tajoldin said.

“The purpose of this drill is to strengthen security and its foundations in the region, and to expand multilateral cooperation between the three countries to jointly support world peace, maritime security and create a maritime community with a common future,” the Iranian official told ISNA.

Both navies from Iran’s armed forces and Revolutionary Guards will take part in the drills, which include various tactical exercises such as rescuing a burning vessel, releasing a hijacked vessel, and shooting at air targets at night.

When America has a weak President, bad things happen.

This Is Not Good News For Anyone

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article reporting that China and Iran have officially announced a 25-year “cooperation agreement”. So what does this mean? Unfortunately, it probably means that Iran is now going to take a significant shortcut in its development of nuclear weapons. When you understand one of the basic tenets of Islam regarding the Mahdi, this is frightening. Many Muslims believe that chaos will hasten the return of the Mahdi (their messianic figure who will bring peace, stability, and sharia to the world). Therefore the idea of a nuclear war is not a problem for them–it simply will hasten the arrival of paradise. Do we really want to do anything to allow people with that philosophy to have nuclear weapons?

The article reports:

For a while now, I’ve noted the development of what seems to clearly be turning into the 21st-century version of the Axis of Evil. It’s composed of Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and arguably Turkey. All of these repressive governments have been growing increasingly aggressive on the world stage and simultaneously seemed to become increasingly comfortable supporting each other where possible. Two of the members, China and Iran, took the process one step further this week, announcing a 25-year “cooperation agreement” between Beijing and Tehran. During the same announcement, China formally reiterated its opposition to the United States and international sanctions against Iran. They also blamed Washington for the collapse of talks aimed at restarting the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and expressed their support for putting the deal in place. So just in case you were wondering which side the Chinese Communist Party is taking in all of this international drama, they’ve made it pretty clear at this point. (Reuters)

On January 15th, Reuters reported:

China and Iran, both subject to U.S. sanctions, signed the 25-year cooperation agreement last March, bringing Iran into China’ Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure scheme intended to stretch from East Asia to Europe. read more

The project aims to significantly expand China’s economic and political influence, and has raised concerns in the United States and elsewhere. read more

The foreign ministry summary said the agreement would deepen Sino-Iranian cooperation in areas including energy, infrastructure, agriculture, health care and culture, as well as cyber security and cooperation with other countries.

Iran and the U.S. remain locked in talks over whether a compromise can be found to renew the deal and dispel fears of a wider Middle East War. A source close to negotiations said on Friday that many issues remain unresolved. read more

Wang, who earlier in the week met with several counterparts from Gulf Arab countries concerned about the potential threat from Iran, also said China hopes to set up a dialogue mechanism with Gulf countries to discuss regional security issues.

Aside from the dangers of a nuclear Iran this alliance creates, it is also an indication of America’s worldwide influence under President Biden. We need to quickly move to electing leaders who are respected around the world and capable of diplomacy that represents the interests of America.

 

 

Will Future Reparations Be Paid?

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In the past year of so, we have heard a lot about paying reparations to black residents of America because their ancestors were sold as slaves. But what about putting a nail in the coffin of modern-day slavery? On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about modern-day slavery in China and the efforts by some Congressmen to end it.

The article reports:

Senate Democrats are blocking legislation that would prohibit imports from China made with Uyghur slave labor, in response to pressure from Biden administration officials who fear the bill would torpedo climate negotiations with the Chinese government, congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) that has long been circulating in Congress and is backed by the human rights community and opponents of China’s forced labor camps, was included in a package of 25 amendments to the annual defense authorization bill, according to a list distributed by Senate leadership on Wednesday.

But Democrats excluded the amendment from a vote late Wednesday night, after members of the party privately objected to it, sources told the Free Beacon. Earlier in the evening, Democrats tried to use a procedural mechanism that would have allowed a vote on the act but stripped it from the final authorization bill, according to a hotline memo from Senate leadership.

The pushback from Senate Democrats comes amid efforts by senior Biden administration officials to quietly kill the bill over concerns it will hinder the White House’s climate agenda and limit solar panel imports from China. Presidential climate envoy John Kerry, among others, has been lobbying House members against the bill, the Free Beacon reported last month. The bill is widely backed by the human rights community and easily attracted Republican support in the narrowly Democrat-controlled Senate. Congressional officials tell the Free Beacon that the new opposition to the measure among Democrats is a product of the Biden administration’s lobbying efforts.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered conflicting explanations for the holdup on Wednesday, with his office initially suggesting to the Free Beacon that Republicans were blocking a vote on the amendment.

The anti-slavery act has “been on the list of amendments Senate Democrats proposed the Senate to vote on that the Republicans have been objecting to … so you should ask the Senate Republicans why they’re blocking the vote,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman told the Free Beacon.

The article concludes:

Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the Senate Democratic opposition to the amendment was the “latest episode in a series of concessions to the Chinese Communist Party.”

“With their words, the administration and its congressional allies insist that America can simultaneously cooperate and compete with Beijing,” said Sobolik. “By their actions, they are dismissing potential complicity in an ongoing genocide to pocket dubious climate concessions from a regime with a track record of lying and breaking promises. That’s the opposite of ‘responsible competition.'”

I wish we could afford to pay all of our representatives and politicians in Washington as well as China pays them.

When America Has A Weak President…

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NewsMax is reporting today that Taiwan’s air force scrambled again on Sunday to warn away 27 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone.

The article reports:

Chinese-claimed Taiwan has complained for a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwestern part of its air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.

Over a four-day period beginning on Oct. 1, when China marked its national day, Taiwan said that nearly 150 PLA military aircraft entered its ADIZ, not territorial air space but a broader area Taiwan monitors and patrols that acts to give it more time to respond to any threats.

The latest Chinese mission included 18 fighters jets plus five nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, as well as, unusually, a Y-20 aerial refueling aircraft, the Taiwan ministry said.

The article concludes:

Those aircraft were accompanied by the refueling aircraft, suggesting China refueled the shorter-ranged fighters inflight, a skill that the country’s air force is still working to hone to enable it to project power further from China’s shores.

Taiwan sent combat aircraft to warn away the Chinese aircraft, while missile systems were deployed to monitor them, the ministry said.

There was no immediate comment from China, which has in the past said such moves were drills aimed at protecting the country’s sovereignty.

I don’t know if China plans to attack Taiwan during the Biden administration. I do know that the Biden family has substantial financial ties to China that might make it very difficult for President Biden to mount a strong objection to a Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan.

As I have said repeatedly, the world is a much safer place when America has a strong President. Unfortunately that is not currently the case.

A Not-So-Veiled Threat?

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s request for recognition as legitimate by the nations of the world.

The article reports:

The Taliban warned the U.S. and the rest of the global community Saturday that their decision to withhold formal recognition of Afghanistan’s new government may result in consequences for the world.

“Our message to America is, if unrecognition continues, Afghan problems continue, it is the problem of the region and could turn into a problem for the world,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at Saturday’s press conference, according to Reuters.

Mujahid noted that absence of formal diplomatic ties between Afghanistan and the U.S. led to the military invasion in 2001, Reuters reported.

I don’t think the absence of formal diplomatic ties was actually the problem.

The article concludes:

Although not yet recognized by a single country in the world, the Taliban are counting on China to provide financial assistance to Afghanistan’s struggling economy. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar, in late October, Reuters reported.

The spokesperson also added that China had vowed to inject funds into Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure, as well as to provide Kabul’s exports access to Chinese markets via neighboring Pakistan.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said the Biden administration’s strategy in regard to the Taliban was a “far cry” from formal recognition during a briefing in September. However, she did not claim that the U.S. would never recognize the organization.

There are a few things to consider here. China has moved quickly to fill the vacuum left by the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is quite possible that China will be able to use the infrastructure America left behind to exploit the rare earth elements that could bring Afghanistan into the twenty first century. China has been working for decades on cornering the market on the elements needed for the computer technology of today. Also consider the fact that much of our Washington ‘leaders’ are indebted to (that’s a polite word for owned by) China. I only wish that we could afford to pay our national leaders as well as China pays them. There are many aspects of the Afghanistan debacle that have much wider ramifications than simply leaving Afghanistan.