ROGER KIMBALL: How Anti-Trump Hyperbole Fosters Insanity.
Archive for 2018
August 26, 2018
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
COLLUSION: Chinese Communist Party Funds Washington Think Tanks.
China’s Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report.
The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies.
The Party’s United Front strategy includes paying several Washington think tanks with the goal influencing their actions and adopting positions that support Beijing’s policies. . . .
The report said the Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies, a major foreign policy education and analysis institute, has received funding from Tung Chee-hwa, a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the party group that directs the United Front Work Department and includes a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the collective dictatorship that rules China.
The funding for Johns Hopkins came from Tung’s non-profit group in Hong Kong, the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, which is a registered Chinese agent.
In addition to Johns Hopkins, other think tanks linked to China and influential in American policy circles include the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Center for American Progress, EastWest Institute, Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Exchange Foundation is tied to Chinese government influence operations and uses the same public relations firm as the Chinese embassy. . . .
In addition to the United Front Work Department, the report identified a Chinese military organization, the Liaison Department, that is engaged in propaganda operations, perception management activities, and intelligence collection.
“For example, the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC), a front organization for the former General Political Department, performs dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting propaganda and perception management campaigns, such as its work through the Sanya Initiative, a series of track two dialogues between retired senior flag officers of the U.S. and Chinese armed forces,” the report said.
The Sanya Initiative is led by retired Adm. Bill Owens, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has used the Sanya group to lobby Congress and the Pentagon against annual publication of the China Military Power report.
Another Communist Party front is the China Association for International Friendly Contact that is part of the Chinese military’s Central Military Commission’s Political Work Department.
The report concluded that the threat to the United States from United Front operations is “significant” but “the extent of its organization and influence is still relatively unknown among policymakers.”
It’s as if all this attention to Russia is just a distraction from what China is doing.
ON THIS DAY IN 1805: The main party of the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. Lewis had scouted out the pass almost two weeks earlier, but this was the day they all crossed together.
At the time, Meriwether Lewis was 31 years old and William Clark was 35.
August 25, 2018
JOHN MCCAIN’S PASSING — A MORE BALANCED ASSESSMENT: More balanced than any of the mainstream media paeans I’ve seen thus far tonight, that is.
IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE LEFT, UNLESS: The Left Has A Death Wish.
OPEN THREAD: Make it magical.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Government efforts to curb opioid prescriptions may have backfired. “Our main thought was that since surgeons were more limited in their ability to prescribe extra pain medications after the patient left the hospital, they prescribed more up front to avoid the risk of patients running out.”
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: The Onion Dunks on Grieving McCain Family.
No such preferential treatment for John McCain, though. This is what he gets for trying to reach across the aisle for all these years. He tried to befriend their tribe, but he never defected to them, so they still see him as their enemy. Now he gets no mercy, no matter what.
There might be a lesson in there somewhere, but being a Democrat means never having to learn anything.
Jim is angry. You’ll like him when he’s angry.
JOHN MCCAIN HAS DIED.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Google Search Results Show Pervasive Anti-Trump, Anti-Conservative Bias.
Related: Glenn in the Wall Street Journal: When Digital Platforms Become Censors: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants say that they’re open forums. What happens when they start to shut down voices they consider beyond the pale?
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Ariana Grande is wrong about Crohn’s disease causing ‘butthole eyes.’
AT AMAZON, save in Home Appliances and Accessories.
THE LONG AND WINDING RHODES: The ‘Echo Chamber’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s A Fact.
WORDS OF WISDOM:
FROM BAUHAUS TO THOMAS KINKADE’S HOUSE: Iconic modern houses get the Thomas Kinkade treatment.
Found via Iowahawk, who tweets, “Possibly the most depraved artwork ever produced.”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Drive-in ‘sex boxes’ for prostitution, built by taxpayers, are a wild success in Switzerland.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 PRODUCTION PUT ON HOLD: “Crewmembers, who were assembling for preproduction, are being dismissed and are free to look for new work.”
As Kurt Schlichter would say, the left is not enjoying living under the rules they created.
WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO VIOLENT? ‘Left-Leaning’ Man Threatened to ‘Blow Up’ Conservative Student Conference.
Related: Man Arrested For Threatening Steve Scalise Had Ammo, Materials And Guides To Build Bombs.
Also Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: CBS News Changes Robert “Beto” O’Rourke NFL Player Protest Headline After Backlash.
SHOCKER: Do-gooders don’t do so good when it comes to dates. “Asked to choose between do-gooders and those who place family members and friends first, subjects said they would rather spend time with those who made people close to them a priority.”
IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Stevie Wonder blames Aretha Franklin’s death on global warming.
Better update the list.
SOMEDAY A REAL RAIN WILL COME AND WASH ALL THIS SCUM OFF THE STREETS: Paul Schrader’s First Reformed Prays for Redemption, Eco-Terrorism.
Is Schrader’s film a cry for eco-terrorism? An example of how faith can lead us to destruction? An attack on organized religion, the kind powered by American consumerism and ego? He’s not offering any easy answers. His thumb is still pressed down on the moral scale.
Eco-terrorism? Why, there’s a concept that Hollywood has never touched upon before.
(Classical reference in headline.)