Made In America -- Ooops, Made In China!

So, it appears there is a bit of a brouha over the UNITED STATES Olympic teams' uniforms, which were designed by the very epitome of haute couture, Ralph Lauren. On the "right winger" side, they are PISSED that berets are the head piece of choice, while the "left winger" side is PISSED that the uniforms were made in fucking China!

Go figure. Rah rah America ... or not.

Gong Xi Fa Ca

First off -- HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!

It's the year of the Dragon, the water dragon to be more specific. I was born under the sign of the water dragon.

Water has a calming effect on the Dragon's fearless temperament. Water allows the Dragon to re-direct its enthusiasm, and makes him more perceptive of others. These Dragons are better equipped to take a step back to re-evaluate a situation because they understand the art of patience and do not desire the spotlight like other Dragons. Therefore, they make smart decisions and are able to see eye-to-eye with other people. However, their actions can go wrong if they do not research or if they do not finish one project before starting another.

[snip]

ARIES DRAGON
Aries Dragons tend to have good luck. With a passionate drive they fill their days to the brim with activity. They are upwardly mobile people so they usually get what they want.

This is a great site about Chinese astrology. Lot's of good information.

Happy New Year!

(A pix of one of my own dragon tattoo's, this one was done around 1989). Although one can see it as either being on my leg or my arm, it is actually on my left forearm, and I am taking the picture with my arm stretched upward.

The Secret Bipartisanship Of The Patriot Act

I was having a conversation with someone at my local watering hole last Friday, and when I indicated my dislike for the current president, he nearly went apoplectic on me! When he asked me why, and I started to explain all of the things that Obama has failed to accomplish when compared to what he campaigned on, I got the regular meme recited back to me that most liberals and progressives chant. That being the statement that Obama (1) has done incredible things and (2) what he hasn't been able to accomplish is because his "hands are tied" by Congress. He even said something akin to "after all, he's only the President."

I started to delineate all the areas of compromise made by the President, mostly with himself and the Democratic party, and the faux bipartisanship the Obama administration believes they have accomplished.

Actually, there is an interesting piece by, you guessed it, Glenn Greenwald, on the actual bipartisanship that exists up on the Hill.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

[snip]

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes. And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings: to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government." Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government." Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture: that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

How's that "transparency" campaign promise working out for America? When Obama campaigned on this rhetoric, and when he especially spoke distastefully about The Patriot Act, it is no wonder that his Administration works "in bipartisanship fashion" secretly to not only extend this horrible assault on American's rights, but enhance it to include spying on American's internet and mobile phone usage. And someone on another blog had the audacity to criticize me for mentioning a thought I had about moving to China ... as if only in China and countries like China, have privacy rights been trampled on!

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.

And people actually want to argue with me that this President is better than not only what we had for the past 8 years with Bush, but will continue to be better than what the "other side" will put up in 2012 for votes?

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens. The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them). Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.

China or America - spying on its citizens is just another job by the government. You tell me where the difference is.

"Please, sir, I want some more."

Well, it's that time again, where the Republicans in Congress are informing everyone else that unless entitlement programs are cut, they will not raise the debt ceiling, which is, of course, a must.

One really has to wonder after all these years of unpaid for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, why any American at all would say yes to cutting their own Social Security benefits, or Medicare. If this was a lesson for elementary school children, cutting defense spending would be the first and only choice. Millions and millions of people will be affected by the Republican plans. Turning America into a third world country, with despots running every state, and an oligarch in the White House, is not how I thought I'd spend my retirement years. Hell, what retirement, eh? According to the Republicans, just work longer. Easy for them to say (and many Democrats too) as they only receive government benefits on top of their million dollar fortunes that got them into Congress in the first place. Don't take their government health care away from them, just take it away from the rest of America. Let's not fund the infrastructure of America, let's give this money away to defense contractors blowing shit loads of cash in Iraq and Afghanistan for their infrastructure, which by the way, is still looking like shit despite the years and billions that have been handed over to foreign countries. Let's continue to support financially countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya, but let's not feed our own citizens. Let them die in the streets of hunger, or freeze to death in the winter because they simply do not have enough money to pay to heat their homes. How many deaths have we had so far that fit that particular scenario, eh? (And, no, I'm not Canadian, but it just seems a fit word - eh?).

People, wake up. The Horatio Alger myth is no longer an option for our young kids. There is no ability to pull yourself up from the proverbial bootstraps and make yourself wealthy. The only options are to be worker bees or be the queen bee. And since there are only a limited number of queen bees but tons and tons of worker bees, you can pretty much count yourself out of the running of queen bee. Most of Americans will never be anything more than a worker bee. And then you die, thanks to Republican (and blue dog Democratic) policies.

What I really truly do not understand is why the wealthy in America (those very, very, very few), and especially the wealthy politicians, feel the need to not share the wealth? Especially considering the Christian motif that generally surrounds those that espouse the "I am rich and you are not" policies keeping the poor in their place. It is the opposite of Christ's teachings to hoard wealth. That's common knowledge -- among everyone, even those who aren't Christian! But in God's name, and American patriotism, the rich politicians bury this country under needless debt so they can continue to hoard the money built off the backs of the rest of America. Compassion is a dirty word in politics -- when did that happen?

It's heartbreaking to see this country go down the tubes as a whole. I can't say I never imagined this happening, though. I realized back in the 1980's that the destruction of the world as we know it would be a financial meltdown, and it would start and end with the United States. People back then thought I was crazy. Hell, we were still fighting the imaginary Communist Russians and fearing the rise of power in China. Now Russia has been broken up into smaller countries, and China has more money than God, and owns most of America.

The rich have sold out this country. But that still isn't enough for them. They won't rest until this country reverts to what it was 100-200 years ago. "Please, sir, I want some more."

Get used to that phrase. And get used to the answer as well, my friends.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Tiananmen Square, 21 Years Later

That was then.

Jeff Widener

This is now.


Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A candle light vigil held in Hong Kong. This is the 21st anniversary of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Buddah With Thousand Hands

This has to be one of the most beautiful dance pieces I have ever seen. And to know that these dancers are deaf is amazing (you can see the sign language interpreters on each side).



Gives me chills and is such a testament to the fact that you can do anything, really, that you want, in this life!

H/T to AMERICAblog.

These are the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe.

Another Day, Another Crime By This Administration

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration is withholding a list of Chinese heparin suppliers requested by congressional investigators looking into problems with tainted supplies of the blood thinner, saying confidentiality agreements prevent release of the companies' names.

As always, the interests of the corporate CEO's are outweighed by the interests of the American people. Ladies and gentlemen, your government in action (well, the Bush controlled government). Wake up, America, and vote Democratic, if you have any hope of surviving in this country as a people.

PART TWO:

WASHINGTON — The general manager and possibly other senior staff members at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where nine miners died last August, withheld information from federal officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face a criminal inquiry, the chairman of a Congressional investigation said Thursday.

The chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse in the mine that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began.

How Different The Relief Aid Is

MIANYANG, China — With the death toll from this week’s earthquake rising rapidly, China has departed from past diplomatic practice, seeking disaster relief experts and heavy equipment needed for rescue operations from neighbors it has long shunned as rivals or renegades.

Officials on Thursday asked a longtime rival, Japan, to send 60 earthquake rescue experts, the first such team China has accepted from a foreign country during the current crisis and one of the few official relief missions China has ever accepted from abroad. This week it also accepted help from at least three private relief teams from Taiwan, the self-governing island with which China has long had tense relations.

Quite a difference from this:

As the urgency intensifies to get food, water and medicine into the worst-affected areas of Burma 11 days after the country was hit by Cyclone Nargis, the country's military government continues to baffle the world by stonewalling international disaster relief.

The government has taken pains to appear on state television as the sole source of humanitarian relief, even appropriating donations from others so that soldiers can hand out the aid. The United Nations warns of a second catastrophe unless a huge aid effort is begun immediately, and Buddhist monks and other Burmese citizens are quietly tending to the sick and hungry.

The junta's bewildering resistance stems from its fear that outside influence would weaken its control and from a distorted desire to maintain the impression that it is compassionate in the eyes of Burma's Buddhist majority, scholars say.

"The regime is trying to control the aid distribution because they want to be the ones to offer it ceremonially, partly to show they have legitimacy," said University of Wisconsin anthropologist Ingrid Jordt, who has lived in Burma as a practicing Buddhist nun.

"They are the patrons, the distributors of largesse," said Bruce Matthews, a Burma expert and professor emeritus of religion at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. "What anybody gets is what the military wants you to get.

Theoretically, they are Buddhists. They care about their Buddhist image."

Nepal authorizes use of deadly force to stop protests of Olympic torch on Everest

Nepalese soldiers and police guarding the slopes of Mount Everest are authorized to shoot to stop any protests during China's Olympic torch run to the summit, an official said Sunday.

Great way to start off the supposedly world solidifying sporting event -- shoot to kill if you protest against China. Guess you know what event(s) I won't be watching come this summer.

I don't really watch the Olympics anymore, anyway. It has become way too, commercialized and not as exciting now that it is every two years instead of every four years. But the way the Chinese government is handling the event, no wonder there's so much hoopla. I mean, shoot the protesters? Come on, people.

If Only We Could Weed Out The Bad FDA Guys Like China

I know this is harsh, and I am not exactly an unabashed fan of China or its policies, but after reading this, and then thinking about the incompetence and dangerous decisions made by the partisan Republican party leadership over the past eight years, I sure wish there was the equivalent punishment for the crimes here in the United States.

BEIJING: China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.

[snip]

The country's Supreme Court has recently made a highly publicized effort to show that it carefully reviews all death sentences and that it has restricted the power of local courts to impose that penalty. But Zheng's case appears to have served a political purpose, allowing senior leaders to show that they have begun confronting the country's poor product safety record. Shoddy or dangerous goods, including drugs, pet food and car tires, have damaged its reputation abroad, especially in the United States.

Hell, we can't even get our guys on this side arrested for their wrongdoings, let alone prosecute them or send them to prison. But China has set the bar, and it's time to let our own FDA know!