Much ado regarding Chinese CP Chairman Hu’s visit to the States. We’ve all seen the Chinese military’s slap at Gates during his recent visit. Testing their still embryonic 5th generation fighter also a pointed embarrassment — again — to the undeniably shaky Chinese civilian control over the PLA and its sprawling infrastructure.
Hu’s doing his final rounds as President, stepping down soon. This visit for a variety reasons always was going to be more tonal than substantive. The hard decisions on policy and direction will await his successor. For the Chinese, kicking the can further down the road has the added benefit of being smart geopolitics. The soft and hard power curves are moving their way on sheer inertia alone. The junky still remains addicted to both Chinese credit and cheap Chinese trinkets. Even Obama’s vaunted ‘green’ industry that he said will produce ‘thousands of good, high wage jobs’ is already stamped ‘Made in China’. A provision regarding restricting government contracting and Chinese goods a symbolic blip. Doesn’t alter the above.
Comment says
Too many ex Agency people on cable saying uninteresting things – Saying stuff that anyone could say. Baer and some others add value – But most of the people on cable only serve to propagandize in a very simplistic and unimpressive way.
Dr Leo Strauss says
The USN sails past Davey Jones’ locker.
Reminds the Stiftung of the time we sat in John Lehman’s office. CBGs were going to take it to the Soviets, sailing into Vladivostok. Yup.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110215/ap_on_re_as/as_us_china_carrier_killer;_ylt=Ap3Ea50LJuHMItvJt08W53Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJuNGsyaTlmBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjE1L2FzX3VzX2NoaW5hX2NhcnJpZXJfa2lsbGVyBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3VzYWRtaXJhbGNhcg–
Comment says
Btw – Pawelenty’s juxtaposition of certain images – stolid bourgeois, hockey win, fighter jets – reminds us of Scarborough’s 1st show which featured a rather odd assortment of conservative iconography.
Comment says
OTOH – Tweety’s exchange w/ Sal Russo is worth watching – Russo is afraid to acknowledge slavery and Tweety keeps pressing him on it. It’s rather bizarre. Slavery Denial is actually gaining traction iin the party of Lincoln. By denial we mean broadly – devalue, change the subject – etc.
Comment says
With Tweety – it’s all Bachman all the time.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Have to admit chuckling at the Pawlenty ad. Just makes us anticipate the gems to come from les autres.
Comment says
This T-Paw ad is ridiculous mismatch for his personality – It’s like Newt build houses for Hab for Humanity and trying to paw that off as something he does when the camera isn’t on.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/01/tim-pawlenty-and-the-rhetoric-of-freedom/
Btw – It would have been hilarious if some snarky editor sneaked a small clip of the Rodney King beating following the clip of the 1980 Hockey win against CCCP.
Comment says
” … even if he proposes good policies, the fact that Mr. Obama feels the need to wrap these policies in bad metaphors is a sad commentary on the state of our discourse.”
Very true, but it has been this way for sometime – Ike’s defense highways, arpanet, etc etc
Comment says
Of course Krugman hedged a bit by pointing out he has nothing against GE because he probably has done speaking or consulting for GE or a subsidiary or plans to in the future.
Comment says
Immelt’s appointment was political – A way to remind and signal to the DC Orient that Obama does not hate business. He may as well have appointed Rick Warren to an interfaith dialogue commission on the same day. Besides Immelt is the kind of Republican businessman the DC beltway likes – he seems post partisan, not a social ogre. Jobs? They don’y need no stinkin’ jobs?
Dr Leo Strauss says
Krugman offers a useful break down of Brand Obama’s new meme, ‘competitiveness’ . And a nice reminder what he’s foisting upon us with Immelt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24krugman.html?src=me&ref=general
DrLeoStrauss says
The empty theatrics of this visit does stun, doesn’t it? Hu’s boiler plate benevolent rise rhetoric repeated like talking points emailed from Crossroads GPS. News Flash — Obama ‘raised’ human rights — as if this was somehow heroic or ‘audacious’.
More proof that the Universe began as a Monty Python skit – Donald Trump provides the most incisive, biting and substantive critique (regardless whether one agrees with his specifics).
Hunter says
I was listening to this report on the TV news last night (unusual for me), and I heard that 235 thousand jobs [/Dr. Evil] bit… $45 billion. I guess a nation of innumerates is easy to rule, or whatever, and I know that the so-called fourth estate has been a pathetic shell of a parody of itself for years, but still… I sort of couldn’t believe I was hearing what I was.
DrLeoStrauss says
A great point. The Obama Administration is already in re-elect mode.
Watching the media coverage about this relatively minor trade deal and it’s not put in context of the existing structural trade problem or even this year’s trade deficit. (Even more so if one factors in that Boeing, which is “American’ in name, sells planes with many components themselves internationally sub-contracted out quite extensively).
euskal says
Been seeing the following article China agrees to buy 45billion in US exports”.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Hu-Faces-Day-of-Rich-Ceremony-Tough-Talk-114193599.html
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I love how they can equate how many states and jobs benefit from this deal. What govt dept could this propaganda come from?