All About Mitt... and What the One Hand Doesn't Know the Other Hand Is Doing
There was a good op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Eugene Robinson last week questioning what exactly Mitt Romney stands for. Apart from being able to sing "America the Beautiful" badly and promising to return this country to its supposed pre-Obama greatness, it's difficult to know what the former governor of Massachusetts stands for. Er, apart from the fact that he wants to replace Obama and insists that his business experience makes him fit to do so, because he can get the United States out of the economic hole that we are currently in.
At least Obama in 2008 excited his supporters and America generally, enough to get himself elected, with his "Change and Hope" platform even if he has not exactly delivered on that, which I put down to his naiveté in dealing with an intransigent Republican majority in the House of Representatives and also the mistake of leaving his health care initiative to the Democrats in Congress and not concentrating on fixing the economy, which most Americans say should be his priority.
There is another excellent piece in today's Post, about China. While a number of the op-ed writers are concerned about Iran's supposed pursuit of the Bomb, and the paper carries a front page article about an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Israeli diplomats, a long slim article on the left side of the op-ed article by exiled Chinese dissident Yu Jie warns about the dangers of Communist China.
Let me back up a bit and say that back in the Eighties my then wife and I rented a room to a female Chinese student. We lived not far from the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore and we rented to a number of JHU students. I was startled to realize that the Chinese student was from mainland China and not from Taiwan as I first assumed. Nonetheless, today, JHU is filled with students from the mainland. No news there. But it has literally turned my stomach to see how the U.S. has cozied up to China over the past few decades, while at the same time continuing to embargo equally Communist but impoverished (through our actions) Cuba just off these shores. Of course the almost sycophantic attention that the U.S. government has given to mainland China was initiated originally by President Richard M. Nixon and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a bit of realpolitik gamesmanship to counter our then superpower foe, the USSR. Yet China was then and now no less a tyrannical state that persecuted its citizens just like the Soviets. Republicans like to berate Obama for being a socialist but I don't hear them speaking out much about the perils posed by Communist China.
Of course, the American business community does not criticize China because the U.S. economy at present is bound up with China's. We are hand in glove with them. They own us. Most of the products we buy are made in China. In the published op-ed article, "China's Long Reach," aka, as published on-line "The Myth of China as a Harmless Tiger," Mr. Yu Jie makes the point that years ago Soviet dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were welcomed in the U.S., but not so Chinese dissidents today. Now why is that? Do we Americans believe in democratic values or not? Or do we only believe in democracy here in the homeland not for the Chinese or others around the world. If so, for shame!
On a slightly different topic but related to the oppression and societal crimes taking place under the government entrenched in Beijing, how many of you have heard about the "Apple Suicides"??? -- the number of suicides among Apple employees working long hours in China for the American corporation. Maybe it is about time we wake up in this country. See this article in the London Daily Telegraph about Foxconn employees in China making products for Apple and other U.S. corporations threatening to commit mass suicide to protest working conditions. China is reported to be becoming a nation of millionaires, just like Mr. Romney -- wow, sounds just like the United States! -- but their government is responsible for allowing their humbler citizens to work in Dickensian conditions. And this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Dickens's birth. Hmmm.
At least Obama in 2008 excited his supporters and America generally, enough to get himself elected, with his "Change and Hope" platform even if he has not exactly delivered on that, which I put down to his naiveté in dealing with an intransigent Republican majority in the House of Representatives and also the mistake of leaving his health care initiative to the Democrats in Congress and not concentrating on fixing the economy, which most Americans say should be his priority.
There is another excellent piece in today's Post, about China. While a number of the op-ed writers are concerned about Iran's supposed pursuit of the Bomb, and the paper carries a front page article about an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Israeli diplomats, a long slim article on the left side of the op-ed article by exiled Chinese dissident Yu Jie warns about the dangers of Communist China.
Let me back up a bit and say that back in the Eighties my then wife and I rented a room to a female Chinese student. We lived not far from the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore and we rented to a number of JHU students. I was startled to realize that the Chinese student was from mainland China and not from Taiwan as I first assumed. Nonetheless, today, JHU is filled with students from the mainland. No news there. But it has literally turned my stomach to see how the U.S. has cozied up to China over the past few decades, while at the same time continuing to embargo equally Communist but impoverished (through our actions) Cuba just off these shores. Of course the almost sycophantic attention that the U.S. government has given to mainland China was initiated originally by President Richard M. Nixon and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a bit of realpolitik gamesmanship to counter our then superpower foe, the USSR. Yet China was then and now no less a tyrannical state that persecuted its citizens just like the Soviets. Republicans like to berate Obama for being a socialist but I don't hear them speaking out much about the perils posed by Communist China.
Of course, the American business community does not criticize China because the U.S. economy at present is bound up with China's. We are hand in glove with them. They own us. Most of the products we buy are made in China. In the published op-ed article, "China's Long Reach," aka, as published on-line "The Myth of China as a Harmless Tiger," Mr. Yu Jie makes the point that years ago Soviet dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were welcomed in the U.S., but not so Chinese dissidents today. Now why is that? Do we Americans believe in democratic values or not? Or do we only believe in democracy here in the homeland not for the Chinese or others around the world. If so, for shame!
On a slightly different topic but related to the oppression and societal crimes taking place under the government entrenched in Beijing, how many of you have heard about the "Apple Suicides"??? -- the number of suicides among Apple employees working long hours in China for the American corporation. Maybe it is about time we wake up in this country. See this article in the London Daily Telegraph about Foxconn employees in China making products for Apple and other U.S. corporations threatening to commit mass suicide to protest working conditions. China is reported to be becoming a nation of millionaires, just like Mr. Romney -- wow, sounds just like the United States! -- but their government is responsible for allowing their humbler citizens to work in Dickensian conditions. And this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Dickens's birth. Hmmm.
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