Archive for 2018

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY PROPOSES NO MORE TERM LIMITS FOR CHINA’S PRESIDENT: How convenient for Xi Jinping.

In a short release, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said that the Central Committee had proposed to remove from the country’s constitution the expression that the president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms.”

It said the proposal was made public Sunday, a day ahead of a scheduled meeting of the Central Committee. It was unclear why the announcement was made ahead of that meeting.

Xi, 64, was approved to begin his second five-year term late last year and is slated to step down in 2022. But many analysts believe he wants to stay in office longer.

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Xi, as the son of a famed Communist Party veteran, is known as a “princeling.” He rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai’s party leader in 2007 before being promoted the same year to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. A year later, in a sign that he would succeed then-leader Hu Jintao, he was tapped to be vice president.

Since his elevation to the presidency in 2012, Xi has overseen a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption that has helped him eliminate rivals and consolidate his grip on power.

A Chinese princeling. So we’re witnessing his transition Chinese emperor? Maoism. Stalinism. What’s the difference? They’re all absolute monarchies.

HUH – ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THAT JAMES DAMORE WAS JUST MAKING THINGS UP: Female software engineer at Google sues the tech giant for creating ‘bro culture’ that led to her being slapped, groped and sexually harassed at work.

As Glenn has written, “I think that both Congress and the Justice Department need to investigate these claims that Google is a cesspit of race- and gender-based hatred and discrimination.”

Related: Neil Young Blasts Google in Epic Rant: They Don’t Pay Musicians a ‘F*cking Cent’

Google is sure making lots of new friends these days.

ROD DREHER ON HOW THE NRA TURNED TOXIC OVERNIGHT:

Me, I don’t care one way or another whether or not people choose to boycott the NRA, and those that do business with it. Of course it is their right to boycott.

Still, it’s chilling to see how quickly this kind of thing happens, owing to social media. “Chilling” because of the herd mentality that develops overnight when a social media mob gets started on a subject. A business or a cause can be ruined overnight. We saw something very similar in 2015 around the Indiana RFRA law. Corporations and the NCAA compelled state lawmakers to change their minds. Memories Pizza, a small-town pizzeria, was hounded mercilessly because a TV reporter asked its Evangelical owner if he would cater a gay wedding, and he said no.

The big lesson of the Indiana RFRA debacle was: Once big business joins the social justice mob, it’s over.

If you can think if a single instance in which a social media mob was activated behind a conservative cause, then you’re a better thinker than I am. It is inconceivable to me that big business would break off any relationships with left-wing advocacy groups because a conservative social media mob intimidated them.

Even if you think the NRA deserves what it gets, you ought to be deeply worried about the power of social-media mob action. It’s terrifying how quickly the mob can destroy a person’s livelihood. You might believe that it’s perfectly fine, because finally a technique is having an effect on an evil institution, and bring about justice. But what happens when that mob is turned onto you, and an institution or cause that you support? What happens when you are given no opportunity to defend yourself, but have to face a tsunami of rage? What happens when you can’t count on anybody to defend you, because they rightly fear that the mob will go after them next?

As John Nolte tweeted yesterday, “The future is Trotskyite fascism cloaked in self-righteous victimhood.”

WRITERS BLOCKED: Lionel Shriver on how the new call-out culture is killing fiction.

[T]hese days, straight white fiction writers whose characters’ ethnicity, race, disability, sexual identity, religion or class differs from their own can expect their work to be subjected to forensic examination—and not only on social media. Publishers of young adult fiction and children’s literature hire “sensitivity readers” to comb through manuscripts for perceived slights to any group with the protected status once reserved for distinguished architecture.

The publishing magazine Kirkus Reviews assigns “own voices” reviewers with a matching “marginalised” pedigree to assess young adult books that contain a diverse cast. Last autumn, the magazine yanked both a positive review and its coveted “star” after online activists accused Laura Moriarty’s dystopian novel American Heart, which imagines a future in which US Muslims are sent to internment camps, of using a “white saviour narrative.” (Yes, whole plot lines are becoming unacceptable. This year’s film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has attracted heavy flak because its racist cop rounds into a half-decent human being. Writers can refurbish murderers into good guys, but must never redeem a racist.)

As for adult literature, it’s impossible to gauge the degree of politically correct censorship going on behind the scenes at publishing companies and literary agencies. Editors and agents are unlikely to assert directly that a submission’s content is too hot to handle. Having tackled divisive subjects or deployed characters who don’t hew to the rules of identity politics—rules that are often opaque, or at least until you break them—authors are left with uneasy suspicions about why their manuscripts might be attracting no takers, but with no hard evidence.

Read the whole thing.

MAXINE WATERS BASKS IN GLOW OF “IMPEACH 45” CHANT.

So the Dems will run in November on impeaching Trump, rolling back his tax cut, identity politics, and taking away guns owned by lawful Americans?

As Steve noted this past week, “All Democrats have to do is not act crazy, somebody recently quipped, and they can’t even manage that.”

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MAHMOUD ABBAS? Being Treated in a Great Satan Hospital. “Abbas is following in the footsteps of his Arab and Muslim rulers: condemn the Great Satan (the US) and Little Satan (Israel) in the vilest terms and kill their citizens when you can, but for the best medical care, why go to the hospitals in their own countries?”

THAT WAS FAST: Canada’s The Rebel Website creates FireScottIsrael.com URL. Click over if you’d like to add your name to the petition. (I did.)

I TOTALLY GET CALIFORNIA, BUT THE GOLDEN STATE’S NIGHTMARE CONFUSES ME: “Luckily for California’s barbarous elected officials, there are other reasons to live, do business, work and play in California. Indeed, if it were only about the costs of public policy, then no one would live in California. But the costs imposed by government do matter, and they take a real toll. Consider, for example, that in terms of net domestic migration – that is, people moving among the states – California lost 556,710 people net to other states from 2010 to 2017. That came after net losses of 1.5 million from 2000 to 2009, and 2.2 million from 1990 to 1999. In terms of people voting with their feet, California excels at sending people elsewhere – and that’s quite a dubious accomplishment again given how much the state has to offer.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

MARK STEYN: A Total Failure Of The State. The state’s solution, of course is “give us more power.” I think we should start punishing officials who fail us, instead.

THE INSTA-WIFE: School Killers: Complex, Yet Simple. “I used to talk with many parents of kids who were violent and the common theme was that no one would do anything; not if the kid threatened to kill them, not if the kid made their life a living hell and not even, sometimes if the kid threatened or hurt younger siblings. It was a helpless, horrible feeling. And now, these kids are unleashed on society and act upon their anger in the most destructive of ways.”