American Innovation

China . . . China . . . China!

All we hear about these days is China. What’s their problem? Are they trying to prove something? Like what? That Communism works?

Frankly, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. It’s a classic case of trying too hard.

I mean, come on!

They keep showing off, rolling out amazing stuff. Like we’re supposed to be impressed.

Here are a few over-the-top examples of a country that blows its horn a bit too loud.

China claims it has more high-speed train tracks than the rest of the world combined. Over 50,000 km, just over 31,000 miles. And they’re building more. They plan on expanding to 60,000 km within the next five years. Talk about overkill! They just developed the fastest bullet train in the world, which clocks in at 450 km/hour. Good luck getting across the tracks, arms loaded with groceries, when there’s a train coming at you at 280 mph!

On the socio-economic side, over the past 40 years, China has rescued 800 million people from poverty, completely eliminating extreme poverty across the entire country. I’m wondering, did the people have any say in this? I doubt it. Maybe some people prefer to live off the grid, living minimal lives. The communist country just barged ahead and gave everyone a higher standard of living. You sure won’t see this kind of “social engineering” in the U.S.

China also just opened the highest bridge in the world in Guizho.

Appears to be an awesome place to bungee jump!

China’s cities look like something out of science fiction, or maybe the 22nd Century . . .

. . . if you like that sort of thing, all those fancy lights and glitter.

Speaking of which, China has claimed the Guinness Book of World Records crown for the most elaborate drone show, utilizing 16,000 drones last year in Liuyang for a dazzling display of artistry and technology.

Well, Mr. Xi Jinping, you might want to note that the U.S. has drones too. Don’t push your luck or our drones will bomb your Confucian ass!

Claiming another “triumph” — isn’t boasting tedious? — the Chinese car company, BYD, has recently taken over as the major producer of electric automobiles in the world. Apparently, they’re less expensive than Teslas and people who have driven them claim they’re superior to anything else on the market. Fortunately, as a result of the enlightened trade polices of the U.S. government, you can’t buy these “spy cars” in America. That’s all we need is for the Chinese to be snooping on us every time we get behind the wheel, with BYD’s clever screen and AI powered computer brains.

Yeah yeah yeah. I could go on. Deep Seek, quantum computing, greening of deserts, Kela Power Station (the world’s largest hydro-photovoltaic power station), Taihu Tunnel (the world’s longest underwater tunnel), AI-Powered Humanoid Robots, etc.

All I really want to say is that this orgy of “progress” is well and good if you want a tiny group of commies, cloistered in a back room deciding what’s good for the country, dictating what will make the lives of its citizens more efficient and enjoyable, telling people HOW TO LIVE!

Sounds like DICTATORSHIP to me!

Any red-blooded, democracy-loving, freedom-loving American will set your thinking straight, make you to appreciate the incredible system America and the Western democracies have in place. They’ll tell you that the proper and right way to run a country is to let the PEOPLE decide, not some bureaucratic ideologues who read Karl Marx and think they know it all.

Capitalism is the name of the game in America. Consumers get to decide for themselves what’s important to them. Capitalism responds to demand, that is, the desires of the PEOPLE. American industries always have their ears perked, their fingers on the pulse of the consumer. When people make choices and decide what makes them happy, what enriches their lives and that of their families — what they’re willing to lay out cold, hard cash for — the engines of industry fire up, and voilà! Some new, amazing product appears on the shelves. That’s how America got to be the most powerful nation in history.

Take a recent example.

Americans know that the strength of the country relies on diversity and acceptance. Everyone is a member of the greater American family. And everyone should be made to feel so.

An American manufacturer heard the call. With the creativity and innovative genius only seen in the great U S of A, Mattel Toys just announced the latest addition to their collection of iconic dolls: AUTISTIC BARBIE!

As the referenced article points out: “This launch builds on Mattel’s previous efforts to broaden Barbie’s representation. Over the past few years, the company has introduced dolls with Down’s syndrome, Type 1 diabetes, visual impairments, and mobility challenges, reflecting both physical and neurological diversity.”

Hurray, I say! Autistic girls will no longer feel left out. Now they have a Barbie Doll they can identify with. While I can’t find an official announcement, I take it on faith that Mattel will soon follow up with an Autistic Ken doll.

By the way, my wife and I were recently in China and did extensive shopping in some of the most spectacular malls in Chengdu. I DID NOT ONCE SEE ANY BARBIE DOLLS, much less an Autistic Barbie. This clearly demonstrates how tightly the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) controls the information ecosystem in China. Chinese people are woefully kept in the dark on so many important things.

Yes, without a doubt, the U.S. is the innovation capital of the world. Which makes me think: we don’t have to make America great again. It’s always been great and it’s still great! In spite of the nattering nabobs of negativity who campaign for high office by planting seeds of doubt. Yup! It’s true. Or my name isn’t Wayne Gretzky.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

American Innovation | John Rachel

Obama’s Neocons and Other Hawkish Lunatics

 

People often don't see the obvious.

I constantly get criticized for maintaining that Obama is a warmonger. The
president's actions are proof positive:  His escalating of the war in
Afghanistan, his engineering the destruction of Libya, his manufacturing
the crisis in Ukraine, his demonizing Putin and resurrecting the Cold War 
with Russia, his infamous kill lists and callous use of drones in countries 
like Pakistan and Yemen.

Most recently, there was his request for unlimited war powers,
a new AUMF, a shrewdly and deceptively worded legislative authorization
which allows him to attack any country, anywhere on the earth,
targeting individuals, groups and nations which he alone decides are
deserving of some tough love __ aka annihilation by military force.

If this weren't incriminating enough, just look at the people he is surrounded by.

First, the hard-core psychopaths . . .



Ashton Carter is Obama's new Secretary of Defense. He wants confrontation with Russia; advocates a "preventive war" on North Korea, i.e. blow them to kingdom come now rather than later; and thinks we need to mount an aggressive campaign to fight ISIS. I guess he finds it easy to overlook the fact that our other aggressive campaigns created ISIS, that they are using the armaments we introduced into the region for their aggressive campaign, that every aggressive campaign we have mounted in the Middle East has recruited more fanatics and terrorists,
a fact which has been verified by our own security agencies. Carter is
an unapologetic proponent of projecting America's military across the
globe, without respect for the national interests of any other sovereign
powers and without patience for the niceties of diplomacy.

 

James Clapper is Director of National Intelligence, and is by any measure
Spy-Master-In-Chief.  He recently distinguished himself by 
lying under oath to the U.S. Congress,
evidence that he believes that as head of a major law enforcement
agency, he himself is above the law. Like other neocon exceptionalists,
he believes the U.S. itself is above the law, thus entitled to
ignore treaties, international legal precedents, and anything America
finds bothersome. He recently threw his flaming hat into the ring of
international politics by advocating sending lethal weapons to Ukraine,
violating the terms of the Minsk II agreement which is offering some
hope for the end of the bloody conflict, and more destructively,
antagonizing Russia, which has over the past year worked relentlessly to
broker peace there. But why would Clapper want peace? That might end up
reducing his bloated share of the federal budget.

 

Victoria Nuland is Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and married to Robert Kagan, one of the founders of the neocon Project for the New American Century.
She was instrumental in turning the Maidan demonstrations into a full-blown coup, an illegal, violent overthrow of the admittedly corrupt but still democratically elected government. She continues to sabotage any hope for a negotiated solution to the crisis she helped to orchestrate
and create. She is virulently anti-Russian and militantly in favor of
dismembering the country to expedite the control and plundering of
Russia's abundant natural resources, as well as those of the Ukraine,
for the benefit of American-backed banks and corporations.


 

General Philip M. Breedlove, is the current Supreme Allied Commander Europe
(SACEUR) of NATO Allied Command Operations. He has had a remarkable career indeed, but his recent detachment from reality and delusions of grandeur have made him the major proponent for war on Russia in the E.U. theater of command. His constant spewing of venomous anti-Russian rhetoric and wild claims have made him both a laughingstock and a thorn in the side of the saner members of the European community, who for some reason
don't want Europe to become an incinerated pile of rubble in service to
the American dream of world hegemony. If Russian troops and equipment
had invaded Ukraine as many times as General Breedlove has claimed __
against all evidence to the contrary __ half of the Russian military
would be set up in vast emplacements visible from the moon with a cheap
pair of binoculars. But you know those cagey Russians! They made
everything invisible! They're there! Really. Just ask Breedlove.

 

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt is a California guy with a very shallow, checkered career in the diplomatic services, which makes him the perfect tool to go about the business of spreading propaganda, sidling up to chocolate king Petro Poroshenko __ current President of Ukraine __ for photo ops and general glad-handing, and promoting the depraved neocon agenda, unburdened by a comprehension of the complexities of international
relations, indifferent to the human suffering being inflicted on
citizens in the East of the country, and cavalier about the potential
for nuclear war the machinations of the U.S. is creating. Snatching war
and death from the jaws of peace and harmony? All in a days work!


Then, there are those without official neocon credentials but who embrace undisguised bullying and unrestrained militarism.

 

Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, seemed over the course of
much of her career to have her heart in the right place. She cared so
much about victims of genocide, she even wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning
book about it, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.
She has stood strong for religious freedom, human rights, women's and
LGBT rights, and campaigned against human trafficking and for protection
of refugees and religious minorities.

Unfortunately, lately she's become very confused. She wants to accomplish these noble
things by bombing everyone into submission. She was instrumental in the destruction of Libya,
and now her weepy voice can be heard spreading propaganda and
subjecting the world to her acrimonious diatribes promoting chaos and
violence at the United Nations. Power issues shrill catcalls demonizing Putin, rails against Russia, then without blinking prevaricates about the actual role the U.S. has played in the Ukraine. What happens to these people? Is there some mutant strain of warmongering meningitis going around?

Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry put a unique spin on an old
tactic. Instead of doing the familiar GOOD COP/BAD COP routine, these
veteran clowns do BAD COP/WORSE COP __ each of them vying to be more
obnoxious, deceptive, and counter-productive than the other.

 

Joe Biden has always been a straight-talker, unafraid to lay it on the
line, paint stark images in bold strokes. He shoots from the hip and
often ends up with his foot in his mouth. The problem now is not his
candor. It's his rancor. That and his willingness to ignore facts and be a complete stooge for policies which at best are misguided, or at worst will plunge America and Europe into another major war. He and Kerry have already alienated Russia, undone years of diplomacy, unraveled the trust that had slowly built over decades, and launched Cold War 2.0, a frightening confrontation which has the potential to bankrupt the country, if not trigger the nuclear holocaust of World War III.
Joe just can't shut the fuck up. Maybe the gaffs were funny before, but
it's hard to get a giggle going when we're facing human extinction.


 

Unlike Biden who is a full-out puncher, the more guileful John Kerry is a master of the feint and duck. He'll often use the Rope-A-Dope to keep everyone off-balance, as if
this vindicates the havoc he will in the end remorselessly inflict. His pronouncements combined with Obama's has turned a peaceful and generally promising detente with Russia into a hostile and dangerous game of chicken. Along the way, Kerry has managed to alienate many of America's most trusted allies, and create panic and hysteria among many former nations of the Soviet
bloc. When not hiding behind his adorable impersonation of Pepe Le Pew,
he's threatening, intimidating, bullying, and overall a bombastic
buffoon.

If these lunatics are allowed to continue, they will not rest until they destroy the world.

These folks are so blind, so arrogant, so incapable of perspective and moral sensibility, so drunk on power and possessed by delusions of imperial grandeur and world conquest,
so out of touch and incapable of common sense and common decency, so
lacking empathy and basic kindness, they are happy risking nuclear
annihilation to see their misguided priorities and psychopathic visions
prevail.

Obama's foreign policy is a box of chocolates. Except you always
know what you're going to get __ more war, more bombing, more drone
assassinations, more innocent civilian deaths, more illegal regime
change, more chaos and destruction.

Then again, what else can we expect? It's the company he keeps. Obama is surrounded by bloodthirsty, arguably mad, imperialist warmongers, megalomaniacs who see themselves as saviors of the Universe, chosen by
destiny and blessed with infallibility. Were any of them to undergo
sound and objective psychological testing, they would immediately be
committed to maximum-security institutions for the criminally insane.

However, America treats them differently.

It elevates them to the highest positions of power.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]