RUTHFULLY YOURS

What Obama Needs to Say to China’s Next Supremo Posted By Gordon G. Chang

http://pjmedia.com/blog/what-obama-needs-to-say-to-chinas-next-supremo/?print=1

Vice President Xi Jinping, slated to become China’s next supremo, arrives at the White House tomorrow. We have been told [1] that the Obama administration will not “sacrifice the important issues for the sake of having a comfortable visit,” yet there is a sense of pessimism in Washington about America’s ability to persuade China to move in the right direction. It seems that everyone here believes that Beijing owns the century and controls our destiny.

The truth, however, is that we have the ability to get China to do what we want. Why? Because at the moment the Chinese economy is faltering — most indicators are pointing to low single-digit growth and “hot money” is gushing out of the country — and Washington holds the key to rescuing it.

China at the moment is in trouble because, among other things, export growth, once the engine of its economic “miracle,” has been on a long downward trend. Last month, exports fell 0.5% on a year-to-year basis and 14.2% month-on-month, a performance well below consensus estimates. That’s a problem for Beijing because it is dependent on sales abroad to keep Chinese factories humming and workers employed, and the American market is extraordinarily important to them.

The general narrative is that, when the global downturn hit in 2008, Chinese exporters started selling more to other markets and became less reliant on tapped-out American consumers. The facts tell the opposite story, however. In 2008, 90.1% of China’s overall trade surplus related to sales to the United States. That already staggering figure increased to 115.7% in 2009, and 149.2% in 2010.

And last year? Last year, the figure was a simply unbelievable 190.5%. In 2011, China’s trade surplus against the United States hit $295.5 billion, easily surpassing the 2010 record of $273.1 billion.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2029/-Prince-Talals-Fox-News-AWOL-on-Prince-Talals-Twitter-Story.aspx

Have you heard about Hazma Kashgari, the Saudi blogger who tweeted an imaginary conversation with Mohammed, drew so many (tens of thousands) angry comments from his co-religionists and co-kingdomists that he deleted his tweets, fled the country and made for New Zealand to seek asylum but was arrested in Malaysia and extradited back to Saudi A where he now faces charges on the capital crime of “blasphemy”?

Not if you watch fair and balanced Fox News, you haven’t. I have searched the site but cannot find any stories about Kashgari. (You try.)

You don’t suppose the fact that Saudi dictatorship-family-member Talal bin Alwaleed owns the largest non-Murdoch stake in Fox News (7 percent) and a new stake in Twitter (almost 4 percent) has anything to do with that, do you?

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Racism is about many things but it isn’t about race. To understand the uses of race in American liberalism requires understanding its place in the political culture. When American liberals speak of race they aren’t speaking in the genetic sense, what they are doing is clumsily piggybacking class onto race and adding one dubious construct to another.
The placement of racial politics at the center of liberal advocacy coincided with a growing national prosperity that seemed to be on the way to making class warfare of the old kind irrelevant. Previous liberal civil rights activity had been a subset of class, but class now became a subset of race. And both were a means of liberal self-definition as the people concerned with the plight of the downtrodden.

Class warfare was not really about the poor, it was about using a permanent social problem as a means of recreating the social order and gaining permanent political power. Race is just class dressed up in the same old class warfare clothes so that there is nearly no distinction between the two. Reformers gain power by attacking the failures of the system and positioning a social problem as an open sore that must be healed. But it isn’t healing that they have in mind.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/14/terror-from-tehran/print/ Terror from Tehran Posted By P. David Hornik Terror struck—or attempted to strike—Israel in two foreign locations on Monday. In New Delhi, a passing motorcyclist apparently slapped a bomb onto the car of an Israeli diplomat. He wasn’t inside, but his wife was, and she and the driver were injured—neither of them gravely. The […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/14/hating-valentines-1/print/ [Editor’s note: This article is reprinted from our Valentine’s issue of 2010. It has been slightly edited to fit this year’s day of love.] Today, Tuesday, February 14, is Valentine’s Day, the sacred day that intimate companions mark to celebrate their love and affection for one another. If you’re thinking about making a study […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/02/

When Professor Alan Dershowitz spoke to hundreds of pro-Israel supporters at the University of Pennsylvania last week, many understood him to be simply providing a broad-strokes counter-message to the anti-Israel Penn BDS (boycotts of, divestment from and sanctions against Israel) conference which began the next day on the same campus.

But while Dershowitz was there in the ostensible role of “lover of Israel because I am a liberal Democrat,” a close listening and gentle unpacking of many of his standard lines reveal more nuanced positions relating to Israel than many typically understand him to espouse. The nuances are very important, especially because they come from so committed a tribunal of the liberal left.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44602?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=ac6cdb226b-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email People are freezing to death in their homes and in the streets. What will it take to drive a stake into the heart of the global warming monster? By Friday, February 10th, an estimated 500 Europeans had died from the freezing weather gripping the continent. This is the price they and British citizens are […]

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/13/can-mitt-close-the-deal/ He has three weeks left and if he can’t — forget about it. Cold, bleak February has turned into a happy time for us. It’s given us a short break from the constant barrage of debates, speeches and “crucial” primaries in the Republican presidential nomination contest. February has given us, and the candidates, a […]

Limited Government, Religious Liberty, and Joe Biden’s Rosary Posted By Roger Kimball URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/02/13/limited-government-religious-liberty-and-joe-bidens-rosary/ I was talking to a friend in California yesterday about the Obama administration’s latest assault on religious liberty — the “interim final rule” issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring all health plans, including those at […]

israeliadvocate@israeliadvocate.net From time immemorial, security fences have been built around the world often in disputed territories to disrupt terrorists, drug smugglers, and illegal immigrants from entering.  No doubt, these fences often cause difficulties for native populations in the vicinities where they’re built.  To name just a few: India/Pakistan:  India is constructing a fence along the majority of […]