Liberals are Irony Impaired

Yuan-gry Mark?

No Tickee, No Laundry!

CNN -Fake Geography

H/T Theo Spark

The Force Awakened in China. Was it Racist?

Racist? Check out what happened to the black guy prominently featured in American trailers and posters:


That guy "Finn" may be the new "Where's Waldo" of China! And Chewbacca is MIA. Is that speciesist? One wag at TMZ said it was because Chinese eat their dogs...

"Who's a good Chewbacca? Yes you are! Yes, you are!"

Clear Thinking Democrats

A swathe of China was blanketed with acrid smog Monday after levels of dangerous particulates reached around 50 times World Health Organization maximums, in what environmental campaigners said were the highest figures ever recorded in the country.

Si se pueda!

Obama: "Trust Me, If You Like Your Jobs, You Can Keep Your Jobs"

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Bamboozler-in-Chief At it Again!

Here's the latest ad that Obama "approved":


"The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing." -Wa Po

I'm shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would outsource jobs to China, says Barack. But, didn't Obama choose the CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, to be the head of his Jobs Council, to be a close Business adviser? And hasn't GE been outsourcing jobs , shipping manufacturing and engineering and development jobs to China, too?

Other than rank hypocrisy, how is what Romney is accused of doing any different that what Obama's closest business adviser does regularly?

And the Washington Post's Fact Checker gives Obama's crew four "Pinocchios" for their dishonesty.

The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

This concerns Romney’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the state’s work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.

Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs — the call center might have moved from India to another state — but “had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money.” The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.

When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah — just as Romney had predicted.

Outsourcing jobs to Utah. Perhaps if Obama is re-elected (God forbid), he could see about making Utah the 58th state?


Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Obama Fried Chicken?

The Chinese are not world renowned for respecting copyright and intellectual property distinctions. Still, it looks like someone is ripping off Colonel Sanders and using a caricature of Obama to do it. Hence the "O" in "OFC"?

Or is this, perhaps, a partial payback on our Chinese debt?

Don't let Michelle find out Barry's fronting for fried foods!


"You definitely DON'T want fries with that!"

H/T Memeorandum

"May You Live in Interesting Times."

Someone recently asked about the origin of "May you live in interesting times."

I said, It was originally considered a curse in China. Considering our state of our indebtedness, and to whom, perhaps it should be, "May you live in compound interesting times."

A little more background, if you will. I did a little study of Chinese history back in my college days and even wrote a paper on the history of technology in China. As I recall from my far distant and semi-misspent youth, the Chinese venerated tradition. Find the perfect order and then don't change it, no matter what!

Given the complexity and variety of technological innovations that came out of China, it was somewhat surprising that they would have been eclipsed by the West. Everyone knows the Chinese invented gunpowder, and if you think about it, modern ceramics originated in a country once known for its "china". They invented the compass and innovations in sailing technology, but the culture of tradition, making each generation match the one before was not a suitable womb for innovation.

The West, on the other hand, embraced innovation with a passion. And each innovation caused the innovators to try to improve upon the one before, And as you can imagine, brought about a lot of that dreaded "change". (No, I wasn't going to go there, but thanks for paying attention!) A whole new genre of writing was created about things never even dreamt of before. Hence, they called them "novels". (That's a novel idea!)

You should hunt an old 8 track cartridge down on Craig's List or give someone a nickel for one at a garage sale. Give it to your kids and tell them what it was. Tell them how much music it would hold. And then, tell them about the skeins of magnetic tape that could often be seen at the base of stop signs, where frustrated music lovers would throw the tangled mess out a window after the player "ate" it.

It was innovation that put an ipod jack in my new car's dash instead of an 8 track slot. Innovation that created the computer or smart phone that you are reading this on this very moment. (And now I'll go there) And innovation can continue to create wealth today, if government would loosen its stranglehold on the economy. Investors need to know the extent of the risk to which they are exposing their capital, and have a reasonable rate of return. This can be accomplished by lowering the tax rates, which typically and historically bring in more revenue to the government through increased activity.

Second, bureaucratic hurdles should be lowered or removed. (Think Chinese traditions) Unnecessary and redundant agencies place a burden on new and existing businesses. It's time to trade in a few score of paper pushers on the government payroll in favor of the businesses that will create your next job, or invent the next innovation or technology that will make our future brighter.

Thirdly, we need a common sense approach to our energy need. I doubt that wind and solar are the future fuel for American prosperity. These are boutique sources now, at best, and both require a duplication of capacity for those times the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Until such time as technology makes a quantum leap to cold fusion, greater solar cell efficiency or some unknown and as yet undiscovered technology, petroleum is the fuel of America's economy. And rising petroleum costs make American made goods less competitive, America's crops more expensive and degrades the quality of life for all Americans, save the wealthiest.

We have been getting lame excuses since at least the Clinton administration as to why drilling in the most God forsaken corner of ANWR wouldn't produce any noticeable results "for ten years". So, in doing nothing but obstruct the oil industry to please the environmentalist wacko wing of your base, these oil fields would be producing wealth for the oil companies, Alaska and the US, though taxes, and contributing to the world supply of oil to reduce the demand starting around 2003? Literally, thanks for nothing! /sarcasm

"Interesting times" can be very unsettling, hence the curse aspect. And, if the times were "interesting" it would have to be because they didn't conform to the old and better ways of our traditions. Change is not always for the best. Things changed in New Orleans with a hurricane and in Japan with an earthquake and a tsunami. Some of you long for the good old days of 2008, when you had a job and a decent, if not spectacular 401k. And change happened in 2008 when the nation elected the most incompetent or destructive President since Jimmy Carter.

But, change happens. Right now, we need a double dose of it in Washington. We need a president and a Congress that will make real and not phony spending cuts. The recent downgrade of America's credit rating is a demonstration that world markets will not tolerate the Washington Kabuki dance of fiscal pretense. America has got to get serious about its spending problem. Congress needs to be told that they must find some projects worthy of cuts or termination beyond defense and care for the elderly.

Can you tell me today of a single program, outside of the military (and I'm sure if we looked, we could find some waste and inefficiency there too!), that anyone of either party has suggested that we eliminate, either because it is redundant or no longer serves a useful purpose? And could we not also finds tons of spending for things that might have been a good idea in times of plenty that we can no longer afford? This is also true of state and local governments. You'll see a two story modern art "sculpture" in a public park, and junkets to exotic lands for Very Important Conferences, but we either need to raise your taxes or cut back on police, fire, schools and libraries.

The time for lip service and political gamesmanship has passed. This next election cycle, we need to replace anyone who gets in the way of real financial and debt reform.

This nation was built upon freedom and innovation. It's time once again that we freed ourselves from the tyranny of bureaucrats and big spending politicians, and rallied to the ballot boxes in 2012 to return sanity and self control to government.

When you think about it, that'd be quite an innovation!

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Green Police: Punishing the Innocent Since 1967

Before we get into today's story, a little background. I've lived most my life in the Central Valley of California. When California started more stringent smog testing and smog controls, they started in the Central Valley, because our air was dirtier. The SF Bay area, for example, was exempted for years more, because their air was cleaner.

Any idea why their air was cleaner? Was it because the good liberals in the Bay Area were environmentally conscious and all drove Smart Cars? No. Mostly it was because strong ocean breezes would blow all the crud from the Bay Area into the Central Valley. Businesses and individuals in the Central Valley were hit with penalties and the expense of cleaning up someone else's dirty air for years. Eventually, Bay Areans were required to perform the same smog checks as the rest of the state.

Fast forward to the Clinton years. Remember the Kyoto treaty? The US was supposed to cut back their carbon emissions and curtail manufacturing and energy production, while countries like India and China would be exempted.

That brings us to today. Study will track Valley air pollution coming from Asia

From a wind-blasted ridge high above the Pacific Ocean, scientists will begin learning how much of the San Joaquin Valley's air pollution can be blamed on coal power plants and ferocious dust storms in rapidly developing Asian nations.

As United States air quality standards get even stricter, the amount of pollution blowing in from overseas becomes a more significant hindrance to meeting those standards. And failure to meet them endangers our health and costs us money.

Because the Green Police will be more than willing to fine us more and more for pollution we did not cause.

Not only have Valley businesses already spent billions reducing air pollution, but motorists from Stockton to Bakersfield will now pay $29 million in new yearly vehicle registration fees because the Valley failed to meet standards for harmful ozone, or smog, last summer.

To be fair, we create a lot of that smog ourselves with our belching vehicle tailpipes. And some of it blows into the Valley from the Bay Area or Southern California. This is the first time officials have attempted to quantify how much ozone is crossing over from Asia.

Inexpensive consumer goods, massive volumes of credit, the flu and now smog. Is there anything we can't get from China?

The Asian problem is complicated. Dirty coal power plants are part of it; they spew pollutants that ultimately cook in the sun and form ozone in the atmosphere. Dust storms in western China are a major source of tiny particles that can also be dangerous to your health. Those storms may be exacerbated by land-management practices in that region, said Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis, and the lead scientist on the new San Joaquin Valley study.

Some progress has been made in Asia, Wexler said. "They're cleaning things up, but they're building power plants like nuts, too," he said. "This is a very, very difficult situation."

The pollution takes about a week to blow across the ocean. It stays high above the marine layer, several thousand feet above sea level, which helps scientists differentiate it from pollution coming from nearby cities.

So, bad land management practices and new coal fired plants in China effect the air quality in California, and businesses and individuals here are fined and regulated and their activities are curtailed, and yet the Greenies want to exempt India and China from cleaning up their own pollution as part of the price of membership in the League of Modern Civilized Nations?

Please!

"An Attack on Pakistan is an Attack on China"

Well, as they used to say, "This is another fine development you've gotten us into!"

ISLAMABAD, 19 MAY: In the wake of the US raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China”, a media report claimed today.
The warning was formally conveyed by the Chinese foreign minister at last week's China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, The News daily quoted diplomatic sources as saying. China also advised the USa to “respect Pakistan's sovereignty and solidarity”, the report said.
Chinese Premier Mr Wen Jiabao informed his Pakistani counterpart Mr Yousuf Raza Gilani about the matters taken up with the US during their formal talks at the Great Hall of the People yesterday. The report said China “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China”.

So, if this was conveyed "last week" according to a four day old story, exactly when were the MSM going to get around to informing us of the consequences of Obama not informing the Pakistanis that we would be coming after bin Laden? Have you heard anything about this? Me neither.

Did Obama drive one of our allies into the arms of our enemy? Could it have been avoided? We live in interesting times.

Update: I wonder if this means a UAV visit into Pakistan would be considered an act of war on China? Border skirmishes, anyone?



H/T Weasel Zippers

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Chinese Rule Five Lingerie

Kennedy had his "missile gap", Clinton had a "credibility gap", now Obama must contend with the Chinese "cleavage gap". The commercial is five minutes long. That's half your daily minimum requirement, guys!

My Chinese may be a little rusty, but I could have sworn they used the word "Boobzilla" in there! I'm not sure about the science, but they seem to be implying that if you clamp down hard enough, all your fat cells move to your chest. Could give a whole new meaning to "bondage"!

(They could have done without a couple of the "love handle" shots, though!)

H/T Mrs. Crankipants

"There's an App for That!" Redux

A couple of months ago, we noted the high suicide rate (Eight deaths and two more attempts, back in May) at the Foxconn Technology ipod manufacturing plant in China. ("There's an app for that!")

Fulfilling the demand in the States for ipods, ipads and idunno what else, Foxconn is making plans to expand their manufacturing facilities. And, as a part of their employee retention program: Suicide nets.

The suicide attempts are up to thirteen this year, with ten fatalities, most jumping to their deaths from the tops of buildings . In addition to the nets, a possibility of a pay raise with a performance evaluation could raise worker pay up to 2,000 yuan per month (nearly $300 a month, U.S.) We'll see if the increased remuneration increases employee satisfaction and decreases the desire to see dead relatives.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a Chinese made iphone in addition to my Droid. (And all the dry bones of cell phone carcasses past.)

H/T Rush

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Lady Cincinnatus