LOL Xi

Don’t make me laugh, asshole:

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday Beijing and Washington must find a way to “get along” in a message to US president-elect Donald Trump, state media reported.

In his first message to Trump since the former president secured a second term, Xi said “history has shown that China and the United States benefit from cooperation and suffer from confrontation”, state broadcaster CCTV said.

“A stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship is in the common interest of both countries and is in line with the expectations of the international community,” Xi said.

He called for Washington and Beijing to “strengthen dialogue and communication” and “properly manage differences”.

Yeah, sure.  Stop trying to invade Taiwan, stop trying to colonize the entire SE Asia area, stop hassling India’s border, stop supporting Iran with arms and munitions, stop vetoing the US in the UN, and stop doing a few other things I can’t remember at the moment (but I bet Trump has a list).

Do all that, and we can talk.  No?

Then fuck you, you Commie shitbrain, and buckle in because it’s going to be a rough ride… for you.

New Ban?

This is an interesting development:

Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, prime minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and ‘onto the footy fields’.

Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, he  said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a ‘scourge’.

The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.

Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.

Loath as I am to give any kind of credit to the OzGov, foul totalitarian nanny bastards that they are, I can’t help but wonder whether a) this can work and b) if it does work, will it benefit teens in any way?  Given that teens nowadays appear to have absolutely no problem in accessing porn — even porn sites protected by “age walls” — I’m somewhat skeptical about it all.

It’s probably just the usual “We have to do something!” posturing so common among all politicians.


(Just an aside:  Albanese’s “center-left” philosophy is somewhere around that of Bernie Sanders, politically speaking.)

Class, Explained

Some pleb has a go at the British class system — a system regarded with bemusement by most Murkins — and while we have few parallels with the Brits, the one we do regrettably share is the propensity of the well-to-do middle class to be involved in stupid shit like the Green movement and (lately) the Free Palestine demonstrations.

It’s a fairly lengthy viewing, but funny as hell — and from what I’ve seen of the system, fairly accurate.

Most telling, though, is the description of the rigidity of the thing:  the “bucket of crabs” analogy is very appropriate.

And we have shared the dolorous effects of the “outsourcing” of manufacturing and the jobs therein to foreign countries;  the only difference being that our corporations did it without any help from government.

When The Hatred Surges

Not talking about our local Commies and their HitlerTrump bullshit here.  Nope, we have to go Over There to see a bunch of gummint types having their asses handed to them by the voters, for once.

The Labour government’s decision to scrap its blanket 20mph speed limits in Wales just a year after they were introduced has sparked hope for the rest of the UK. 

Wales’ Transport Secretary Ken Skates admitted the policy was so unpopular even his own family had signed the petition against it.

This despite all the assurances that a 20mph (!!!!) speed limit would do so much to combat Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©.  Of course it wouldn’t (and won’t), just as our own imposition of a 55mph highway speed limit did nothing of the sort either.

I suppose retraction is better than a public hanging, after all — although that may be a contentious issue all by itself, especially among Stout Bulldogs of my acquaintance Over There.  (The Englishman, for one, is especially fond of the “heads on pikes” approach to curbing government excess.)

Now we’ll see if the Welsh example spreads to other Brit municipalities of similar stupidity.  But I wouldn’t count on it.

France Goes Communist, Too

As always, whenever there’s the slightest chance that the Frogs will vote for anything other than Lefty government, the normally-fractious Socialists (of which there are many, to cater to all the flavors of Big Brother) suddenly close ranks, declare “Nous sommes tous de gauche!”  and the “Rightwing” party is put back in its place.

Which is what happened yesterday.  Andrew Neil explains:

The traditional French fallback when Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally does well in the first round of elections as it did last Sunday – of ganging up against it in the second round – was more effective yesterday than anybody expected.

Far from making the hard Right the biggest party in parliament, as was widely expected, the French people gave first place, according to the exit polls, to the hard Left. Almost nobody saw it coming.

Nobody, that is. except people who understand the Frogs and their love of socialism.

Instead of coming first but without an overall majority the National Rally came a poor third.

So, what next?

For all the celebrations on the Left…

 

…France now has a hung parliament, which condemns it to political paralysis or worse for the foreseeable future – a lame duck president and a parliament that will be so consumed by battles between hard Left and Right that coalition government will probably be impossible.

Welcome to Back to the Future, French style. The Fourth Republic, cobbled together in the aftermath of the Second World War, only lasted from 1946 until 1958. During its 12 years there were 21 governments.

Which is probably what we’re going to see in the foreseeable future.

General Charles de Gaulle changed all that in 1958 by creating the Fifth Republic, with a strong president and a diminished National Assembly. He had himself in mind as president when he designed it, though the Fifth Republic has endured to this day.

After yesterday’s elections, France is going to look a lot more like the weak and chaotic Fourth Republic than the stronger, more stable Fifth.

And so it goes.  Pass the vin rouge, Pierre.  Foutu alors.