Thursday, May 21, 2020

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN'S PAYMASTERS IN CHINA ARE BUSY - CREATING CHAOS AND DYSFUNCTION IN MED SUPPLY SALES - WHAT, CHINA WOULD DO THAT?!?


China Allows Con Artists to Create ‘Chaos and Dysfunction’ in Medical Supply Sales

China exported 3.86 billion masks and almost 40 million pieces of protective clothing since March 1
AFP/File STR
4:54

The South China Morning Post (SCMPreported on Wednesday that, despite copious promises by the Chinese government to crack down on scammers and con artists, they are still preying upon foreign governments and private citizens desperate to buy masks and other protective equipment to combat the Wuhan coronavirus.
China has long been the world’s largest producer of such equipment. The current state of the Chinese marketplace was described by knowledgeable observers as sheer chaos:
Desperate buyers, many with little experience of doing business in China, have scrambled to secure medical protective equipment at astronomical prices. Export restrictions that appear to change with the wind have confounded customs workers and scuttled shipments.
And con artists in China have fed off the frenzy with promises to source medical goods they cannot or will not deliver. To lure overseas buyers into making a purchase, they often make seductive sales pitches, claim false connections with legitimate medical manufacturers, flaunt authentic-looking paperwork and guarantee a speedy passage through customs.
Michael Crotty, whose Shanghai-based firm Golden Pacific Fashion & Design is making face masks for export, said the “chaos and dysfunction is hard to describe”.
The SCMP investigated the situation by sending reporters to pose as buyers of protective masks, hazmat suits, coronavirus test kits, and other supplies. They found shady characters lurking at every level of the Chinese market pushing dubious products and brandishing fraudulent certifications. 
One outfit investigated by the SCMP appeared to have borrowed an unrelated person’s home address in Australia as the nominal location of its “temporary warehouse,” to the great consternation of the woman who lived there. Confronted with this and other sketchy details of his operation, the suspected con man – who claimed he could deliver an improbably large number of ventilators for coronavirus patients – spouted some slogans popularized by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and then stopped communicating with the reporters.
The SCMP said most legitimate sources of hot coronavirus equipment have backorders stretching into the winter, so desperate buyers are taking more chances on dodgy operations pushing low-quality products. Phony paperwork, false claims of ties to legitimate manufacturers, and special deals involving large sums of cash upfront have become common. The reporters said eight of the nine suppliers they investigated “provided documentation made out to different companies” when asked for their bona fides.
The general sense conveyed by market experts who spoke with the SCMP is that buyers are so desperate to get their hands on coronavirus supplies that they are taking gambles on sources they know are dicey and allowing themselves to be shaken down for exorbitant prices.
The Chinese Communist government is perpetually promising to crack down on scam operations, but Beijing’s efforts to date fall short of those promises and have made the market worse in some ways:
After European buyers complained about defective products, China in April tightened export controls on a range of PPE goods. This further roiled medical-goods supply chains, creating confusion at customs and delaying shipments of much-needed cargo.
Buyers, freight forwarders and legal professionals have been “befuddled” by vague wording and contradictory information in new export rules, [U.S.-based lawyer Steve] Dickinson said.
“[They] put a range of legitimate steps on parties who were exporting, instead of just having it as a free-for-all,” said Nigel Blair, the head of Nihao Global, which has launched a vetted online marketplace for Chinese medical supplies.
The market, however, was still rife with “bootleggers” trying to take advantage of the crisis, he added.
China’s “gold rush” in mask production as the Wuhan coronavirus spread across the globe inspired over 38,000 companies to register as suppliers, overwhelming the ability of overseas buyers and regulatory agencies to tell good companies from bad. Some of the quality issues appear to stem from factory equipment that was hastily repurposed to create masks instead of other goods, using lower-grade material that was acquired for other purposes.
Faulty medical equipment from Chinese suppliers has caused huge problems for buyers in CanadaSpain, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and the Netherlands, among others. The Chinese Communist Party has dismissed complaints about low-quality masks by blaming the victims for dealing with unlicensed suppliers, or in one notorious case, accusing the customers of using the defective equipment improperly.

Hawley: ‘Beijing Needs to Understand That the Free Ride Is Over — The United States Is Back’

1:36

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) dismissed complaints from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about President Donald Trump’s focus on China for its part in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hawley scoffed at Pelosi’s characterization of Trump’s rhetoric on the communist Chinese as a “diversion.”
“I would say if you think China is a diversion from the challenges that the United States faces, then you’re not living in reality,” Hawley said. “You need to come back to planet Earth. China is the single-greatest national security threat to this country. More than that, Martha — they’re the single-greatest economic threat. We’ve been losing jobs to China for years. We’ve been losing manufacturing to China for years. Now they’re building up their military, even as they unleash this pandemic on the world. We’ve got to change our relationship with China and the time to do it is right now.”
The Missouri Republican signaled things would be different regarding the United States’ relationship with China from this point forward.
“We’re just getting started in terms of standing up to them as a nation,” he added. “I can tell you — Beijing needs to understand that the free ride is over. The United States is back. We are going to protect ourselves and rebuild a better world for the 21st century.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor



Pinkerton – Josh Hawley Is Right: The World Must Know the Truth About the Origins of the Coronavirus 
STR/AFP via Getty Images
26 Apr 20207
19:56
The Need for a Deep Investigation
On April 14, the Washington Post headlined a scoop, “State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.” As the article explained, two State Department officials had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in early 2018 and cabled back on January 19 of that year:
During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, [the State Department officials] noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.
In other words, here was clear evidence that the Chinese lab could have been the vector of the virus—perhaps accidentally, perhaps purposefully, we don’t yet have any way of knowing—that has killed more than 150,000 people worldwide. (The true number might never be known, since not every country provides an accurate or honest accounting of fatalities.) 
A few hours after the Post story appeared, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) retweeted it, declaring, “This is why we need an international commission to get all the facts, publish them to the world, and hold #China Communist Party accountable for its lies & suppression that have cost so many lives.” 
We might note that many other senators, including Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Marco Rubio (R-FL), have also called for investigations of one kind or another. Similarly, two senatorial candidates this year, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, have also been notably outspoken in their determination to chase down the facts about the virus. 
Indeed, it’s likely that when all is said and done, there will be many official investigations going on in the U.S., covering every aspect of this crisis, foreign and domestic. Some will be fair-minded, while others will be witch hunts; the American people will have to judge which is which.  
And yet perhaps the most important of these investigations will be the one that digs into the origins of the virus. Because while we can study the response to the virus—what was done badly, what was done well, what could have been done better—all we want, surely the most important goal is to keep it from happening again.
The Value of a Timeline
In the course of any thorough investigation, it’s necessary to build a timeline. That way, all the investigators, as well as outside observers, can proceed on the basis of a shared body of sequential data points—this happened, then that happened, and so on.
Already, many journalistic outlets have published timelines, but here’s the thing: Most of them are focused on the response to the virus, not the origins of the virus. 
For instance, the New York Times starts its coronavirus timeline on December 31, 2019. Fox News starts its on January 4, 2020. And NPR starts its on January 5. 
These timelines can be useful in terms of assessing the national and international response to the virus. But if we want to learn more about the origins of the virus, we need to push our timeline further back—much further back. 
The Virus Timeline
Here’s a timeline for the virus itself:
— October 2007: A peer-reviewed medical publication, Emerging Infectious Diseases, released an article titled, “Evolutionary Relationships between Bat Coronaviruses and Their Hosts.” The piece, coauthored by 15 scientists, argued that bats are a “natural reservoir of a range of coronaviruses” and included this ominous sentence: “This finding has implications for the emergence of SARS and for the potential future emergence of SARS-CoVs or related viruses.”
SARS, of course, stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged from Yunnan province in southern China in 2002—not far from Wuhan, China. 
— December 1, 2017: A news story appeared in the magazine Nature headlined, “Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus—and suggests new outbreak could occur: Chinese scientists find all the genetic building blocks of SARS in a single population of horseshoe bats.”
Author David Cyranoski begins the piece, “After a detective hunt across China, researchers chasing the origin of the deadly SARS virus have finally found their smoking gun.” We should note that at the time, Cyranoski was not imputing any malign intent; he was simply noting that many nasty viruses seemed to be emerging from this part of China.  
The Nature article detailed the efforts of two Chinese scientists, Cui Jie and Shi Zheng-Li, as they studied the nexus between the horseshoe bat and the coronavirus.  The piece include this ominous paragraph: 
Cui and Shi are searching for other bat populations that could have produced strains capable of infecting humans. The researchers have now isolated some 300 bat coronavirus sequences, most not yet published, with which they will continue to monitor the virus’s evolution.
We might pause over some of the words above: The researchers have now isolated some 300 bat coronavirus sequences. We can quickly see: With that many kinds of coronavirus on hand, a simple application of Murphy’s Law—that which can go wrong, will go wrong—could have devastating consequences. 
So with that fearful prospect in mind, we might take note of the Nature article’s closing lines; speaking of researchers Cui and Shi, the author wrote, “They warn that a deadly outbreak could emerge again. … The risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS is possible.”  
— January 19, 2018: As we have seen, on that date, a State Department cable went from China to Washington, DC, stating that the WIV suffered from a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
— January 2019: Four Chinese scientists—including Shi Zhengli, who has come to be known as “Bat Lady”—published an article in Virusesconcluding, “It is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.”
— February 2020: Two Chinese scientists, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, published a paper suggesting that another facility, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, could have been the source of the epidemic.  As they wrote,“The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Interestingly, this laboratory, which held some 605 bats, as well as other risky animals and materials, is just 300 yards from a Wuhan “wet market.”  
— February 26: Just days after its publication, the Botao/Lei paper, pinning responsibility on the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, was withdrawn. Why? The reason has yet to be fully explained. 
— April 7: Joshua Philipp, an investigative journalist associated with the Epoch Times, a publication hostile to the People’s Republic of China, released a video on YouTube, “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus.” In less than two weeks, the video, which puts the blame on these Chinese government labs, has garnered more than 1.5 million views.  
— April 13: International relations scholar Walter Russell Mead published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “China Still Misleads the World on the Coronavirus: A truthful account of the virus’s progress there would help us know what to expect.”  
Signaling his doubt about China, Mead pointed to a study by the American Enterprise Institute that suggested that the People’s Republic has been covering up its population’s exposure to Covid-19. That is, instead of the 82,000 cases that it has reported, the real number was likely 2.9 million. (As Breitbart News has since reported, China has since revised its Covid numbers upward, although not to 2.9 million.)  
— April 14: Asked about the possibility that the coronavirus could have been weaponized by China, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: 
It should be no surprise that we’ve taken a keen interest in that, and we’ve had a lot of intelligence [agencies] take a hard look at that. And I would just say at this point it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural. But we don’t know for certain.
We can observe that Milley is a military man, and yet he speaks with the ambiguity—perhaps the precise ambiguity—of a diplomat.  
— April 16: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News: 
We know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There’s still lots to learn. … We really need the Chinese government to open up. The Chinese government needs to come clean. … They say they want to cooperate. One of the best ways they could find to cooperate would be to let the world in, to let the world’s scientists know exactly how this came to be, exactly how this virus began to spread.
— April 16: Fox News headlined an ominous new scoop: “Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China’s efforts to compete with US.” The article continued:
There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.  
In other words, the Fox piece was saying, the People’s Republic of China was not seeking to use the coronavirus as an actual weapon; instead, it simply wanted to show off what it could do with viruses. To some, that’s a distinction without a difference. 
— April 16: Asked at a White House press conference about the possibility that the virus somehow emerged from a Chinese lab, President Trump answered, “More and more we’re hearing the story … we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.” 
— April 17: Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, pushed back on Trump and other inquisitive Americans, saying that suggestions of Chinese responsibility were intended “simply to confuse the public, divert attention and shirk responsibility.”  Zhao added: “We have said many times that tracing of the virus’s origin is a serious scientific issue and requires scientific and professional assessment.” (We might note that back on March 12, Zhao tweeted, outrageously, that the U.S. Army might be the source of the coronavirus.) 
— April 17: At the White House, Trump was asked again about the horseshoe bat-coronavirus connection, and answered, “It seems to make sense, they talk about a certain kind of bat, but that bat wasn’t in that area.” Trump’s implication was clear: The bat, or its virus, was brought to Wuhan. By whom? And why? To do what? Inquiring minds should want to know. 
— April 19: At the White House, Trump was asked again about China’s possible responsibility, and answered, “Well, if they were knowingly responsible, certainly. If they did—if it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if it were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences.”
— April 20: Sen. Tom Cotton tells Fox News, “The most plausible explanation for the origins of these viruses is one of those two labs in Wuhan.”
— April 21: White House trade and production adviser Peter Navarro tells Fox News’s Sean Hannity that China “spawned the virus, probably in that P4 lab right there in China, and then they hid the virus behind the shield of the World Health Organization. And Sean, what that did over a six-week period is allow hundreds of thousands of Wuhanians, basically, to get on aircraft and seed the world.” 
— April 22: Headline in Breitbart News: “China Lashes Out at Australia for Proposing International Probe into Coronavirus Origins.” One is reminded of the old saying from World War Two: The flak is always heaviest when you’re getting near the target. 
— April 23: Pompeo said at a press conference that China had “destroyed” samples of the coronavirus and “covered up” the bad news about the virus, thereby hindering the chance for the U.S., and the rest of the world, to prepare for its onslaught.
— April 24: Per the BBC, China rejects the call of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison (among others), for an international investigation, claiming such an effort would be “politically motivated.”
— April 25: Navarro tells Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, “This is a war. It’s a war that China started by spawning the virus, by hiding the virus.”
International Investigation? National Investigation? The Katyn Precedent 
We might return to Sen. Hawley’s suggestion of an international investigation of China. We certainly should hope that that all the countries of the world should wish to get to the bottom of the question of the coronavirus’s origins. After all, the vast majority of  coronavirus-caused illnesses and deaths have occurred outside the U.S. This is, for sure, a planetary crisis. 
Some might be concerned, of course, that an international investigation would be inevitably tangled up in the United Nations, which has so often shown an anti-American bias. Indeed, some U.N. agencies, such as the World Health Organization, have proven themselves, as Breitbart News has documented, to be in the pocket of China.
Still, history tells us that there’s value to an international inquiry—at least as a starting point.
For instance, way back in April 1943, the Nazi Germans discovered that the Soviet Union had massacred some 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals three years earlier, at a place in Russia called Katyn. (It’s not well remembered that in 1939, Joseph Stalin’s Reds had joined with Hitler’s Nazis in attacking Poland; both aggressors seized hundreds of thousands of Polish captives—many of whom met a bad end.)
The Germans had overrun Katyn back in 1941, but it was only two years later that they discovered the Polish corpses mouldering in mass graves. The Nazis were plenty guilty, of course, of their own heinous crimes against humanity, and yet they hadn’t committed this crime. So Hitler’s propagandists jumped on the opportunity to highlight this mass murder and cast the blame on their enemy, the Soviet Union.
Katyn massacre (Public Domain)
Members of the foreign press and the Katyn Commission watching officials exhume the bodies of the Polish soldiers killed at the Katyn massacre during World War Two, Russia, 1943. (Gabriel Hackett/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
The Third Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti (right) holds the Report of the International Katyn Commission, May 4, 1943, in front of Dr. Ferenc Orsós from the University of Budapest. (German Federal Archives)
Germany managed to bring in independent observers from 12 countries, including the International Red Cross, to inspect the Katyn site; the bodies were easily identifiable through their uniforms and other personal effects. So the outside observers concluded that yes, this was a Soviet crime.  
For their part, the Soviets denied any involvement, blaming the Germans, and yet the proof was obvious to anyone but a communist. Later in 1943, the Red Army recaptured Katyn from the Wehrmacht, and the Russians quickly destroyed the remaining evidence. Indeed, the Russians set up their own big-lie propaganda commission, which dutifully pinned culpability for Katyn on the Germans.
Yet Nazi crimes notwithstanding, the reality that the Soviets had committed this particular crime echoed around the world. In particular, Poles, and Polish-Americans, as well as friends of Poland everywhere, shuddered at the thought that the Soviets were coming to Poland not as liberators, but as conquerors—even mass-murderers. 
Interestingly, the very next year, 1944, the Red Cross, having participated in the Katyn fact-finding, among many other activities during those terrible war years, was honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize 
In fact, all through the 1940s, various international groups pursued the Katyn issue, interviewing witnesses and gathering data where they could. The result of all these international efforts was the building of convincing, and enduring, proof that it was, for sure, the Soviets who were guilty of the Katyn Massacre. 
In the meantime, back in the U.S., outrage was growing over Soviet domination of Poland; if the Soviets could lie so brazenly about Katyn, then they could lie about everything else. Indeed, particularly among ethnic communities that could trace their ancestry back to Central and Eastern Europe, the realization that the old countries–now dubbed captive nations—were being held in bondage by the Red Army and their Communist Party overlords contributed greatly to anti-Soviet pro-Cold War sentiment.  
So we can see: Those early investigations of Katyn paid big dividends in terms of making the truth known. Yes, the truth was grim, but better to know it than not know it. 
Then, in 1951, the U.S. House of Representatives formed a fact-finding body of its own, the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre—better known as the Madden Committee, after its chairman, Ray Madden (D-IN). The following year, 1952, the committee concluded, “No one could entertain any doubt of Russian guilt for the Katyn massacre.” 
Needless to say, the Soviets continued to deny everything. Still, the diligent work of international and national fact-finders proved that the Polish blood was on Russian hands.  
Finally, in 2010, long after the U.S.S.R. had collapsed, the Russian government belatedly conceded that the Soviets were guilty. (In 2011, Poland made a dramatic and compelling movie about Katyn.)
So we can see: There is great value in building an international consensus on the basic facts of a case. There’s never a guarantee that an international inquiry will succeed, but if it does, it’s a success worth having.  
So now, back to China and the coronavirus. We don’t know what happened with the virus. We can have our suspicions—even our strong suspicions—but until we fully investigate, we won’t know for sure. 
So Sen. Hawley is right to call for an international investigation. If an honest international commission—perhaps including the Red Cross—could be formed and allowed to do its work, the findings would be enormously valuable, not only for the sake of finding out the truth, but also for the sake of making sure that this sort of debacle is never repeated.  
Of course, it’s always possible that the Chinese might find a way to block an international commission from finding the truth about the coronavirus, using the same big-lie tactics that the Russians used about the Katyn Massacre.  
If so, then America will have to rely on itself to find the truth about the origins of the virus. We can do that, of course, if we choose to—whether or not the rest of the world wants to be a part of it.  
Because the truth about the coronavirus, whatever it proves to be, is too important not to be known.  
We can’t let this happen again.

Senate Dems Push WHO Chinese Propaganda Resolution Condemning "Wuhan Virus" as Racist

 
Daniel Greenfield

First the Dems insisted that "Chinese Virus" was racist. That argument was wrong, but at least comprehensible. Now they're going on to insist that the term, "Wuhan Virus" is racist. And leading the charge is Senator Kamala Harris.
 Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) introduced a bill last week that would malign people as racists for using the term "Chinese Virus," connecting it to hate crimes.
Senate Resolution 580 condemns "all forms of Anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19," citing "Chinese Virus," "Wuhan Virus," and "Kung Flu" as inaccurate rhetoric perpetuating anti-Asian stigma. The bill calls on public officials to denounce such rhetoric in any form.
The resolution specifically claims that, "the use of anti-Asian terminology and rhetoric related to COVID–19, such as the ‘‘Chinese Virus’’,‘‘Wuhan Virus’’, and ‘‘Kung-flu’’, have perpetuated anti-Asian stigma;"
Then it notes that, "in 2015, the WHO issued guidance calling on media outlets, scientists, and national authorities to avoid naming infectious diseases for locations to avoid stigmatizing groups of people;"
I wonder why an organization that is essentially China's hand puppet would have issued such guidance.
Harris, Warren, and the rest of the Dem gang are essentially pushing a resolution that is a set of Communist Chinese talking points meant to censor discussion about the origins of the pandemic.





Senate Committee Authorizes Subpoena in Hunter Biden-Burisma Investigation

biden
AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu
3:41

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to authorize a subpoena related to the GOP investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings on Wednesday.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson opened a vote to subpoena Blue Star Strategies, which is accused of trying to influence State Department policies. The consulting firm worked with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden was still on the board.
The vote, originally intended to take place last week, was postponed for one week “out of an abundance of caution, and to allow time for [committee members] to receive additional briefings.” Despite initial resistance to the idea, Utah Senator Mitt Romney joined fellow committee members in a unanimous vote in favor of the subpoena.
Blue Star Strategies CEO Karen Tramontano sent a letter to Johnson ahead of the vote, asserting their history of cooperation and questioning the need for a subpoena after the firm has already volunteered for an interview. Tramontano also reminded Johnson that the firm has already provided documents related to “meetings with the U.S. government regarding Burisma.”
“At every opportunity we have indicated to the committee that it is our intention to cooperate. At no time have we ever stated or indicated in any way that we would not cooperate,” Tramontano wrote. “Therefore, we are puzzled, despite our willingness to cooperate, why the committee is proceeding to vote on a subpoena.”
Democrats have pushed back against the investigation, suggesting that its motives are purely political. Johnson, however, disagrees. “This subpoena furthers the committee’s work to address the many unanswered questions about this effort and potential conflicts of interest,” Johnson spokesman Austin Altenburg said. “It is unclear why anyone would want to help Blue Star Strategies continue to hide what happened here.”
On Tuesday, California Senator Kamala Harris called out Republican lawmakers for neglecting pandemic business in favor of pursuing the investigation:
Rather than prioritize providing important oversight that will protect Americans from the unprecedented threat posed by this pandemic, you have continued to pursue partisan political matters – such as the markup scheduled for this Wednesday on the issuance of a subpoena – that do nothing to help the millions of constituents that we serve. This is a clear abdication of responsibility.
Hunter Biden and his father, former vice president and de facto Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, stand accused of shady dealings with Burisma Holdings and deliberate manipulation of foreign policy for profit. As previously reported:
In 2014, Burisma appointed Hunter Biden, the youngest son of former Vice President Joe Biden, to its board of directors. The board appointment coincided with the elder Biden serving as the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, and as Burisma’s chief executive officer stood accused of money laundering. Hunter was paid $83,000 per month to serve on the board, despite his lack of expertise in the oil and gas industry.
President Donald Trump has vowed not to let the issue go. “That will be a major issue in the campaign. I will bring that up all the time because I don’t see any way out. I don’t see any way for them — I don’t see how they can answer those questions. And maybe they can. I hope they can,” the president told host Sean Hannity. “I’d actually prefer it that they can. But I don’t believe they’ll be able to answer those questions. That was purely corrupt.”







Senator Dianne Feinstein
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FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT MULTIPLE FORTUNES IN HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM’S POCKETS EVEN AS SHE SOLD OUT AMERICA
The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
                                                                                      LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” HARIS ALIC

FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN HER POCKETS.

SHE HAS AVOIDED PROSECUTION BY VOTING AGAINST ANY ETHICS BILLS AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM'S HANDING OUT "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" BRIBES TO EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT THERE!




IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.


“All in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  AMERICAN THINKER.com


Senator Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President

 

  

A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.
Feinstein said in a statement:
I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitude (NO, IT’S NOT A JOKE, BUT THEN FEINSTEIN IS THE MOST SELF-SERVING CORRUPT POL IN U.S. HISTORY). During his time in Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard working (ILLEGALS) MEXICAN families.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN LOVES  BIDEN BECAUSE SHE WALLOWS IN CORRUPTION. BIDEN HAD SPENT HIS ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE SUCKING OFF BRIBES.
“He’s a totally corrupt swamp thing, and here’s the worst part of his manifest corruption – he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s corrupt, if not personally than in terms of allowing his bum kid to leverage his position. He thinks it’s A-OK for his boy Hoover to cash in all over the globe. After all, that’s what you do, right? That’s part of the benefits package for being in the liberal elite. And all these people fussing and fighting about the paternity test-failing dirtbag getting rich are totally out of line. How dare they? HOW DARE THEY!”
He wants to raise taxes, open the borders, let you pay for illegal aliens’ sex changes, and spark a civil war by taking guns from the people who don’t commit crimes.
THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN IS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT AND SELF-SERVING, SHE HAS BEEN A MAJOR INSTRUMENT IN THE FALL OF AMERICA AS SHE TUCKS THEIR BRIBES DEEP INTO THE BOTTOMLESS POCKETS OF HER PIMP HUSBAND RICHARD BLUM!

America’s China Dependency Syndrome
Lessons from the USSR.
April 28, 2020 
Lloyd Billingsley

“Made in China” has been a familiar label on products for years but it wasn’t until March of 2020 that Americans learned of the perils that might entail. China threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals that would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.
Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters the United States was “dangerously reliant” on China for critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19. Since 2004, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been supplying 80-90 percent of U.S. antibiotics. Americans might wonder how they landed in such a dependent position, and that invites a comparison with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The world’s first socialist state, established in the world’s largest nation, never produced a single product the West wanted or needed. For all its vast natural resources, the USSR was an economic basket case, and by the mid-1980s in serious trouble.
Suppose that some U.S. senator had then offered a trade deal that ignored the regime’s human rights violations and allowed state-owned Soviet companies to manufacture goods for the American market, all marked “Made In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” These would include vital pharmaceuticals and the deal would allow the use of Soviet steel, and Soviet labor, in major infrastructure projects in the United States.
The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
On a visit to Shanghai in 2006 Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal, “I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer.” That would put her first visit in 1975, one year before the death of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong his own self. Feinstein was then a San Francisco supervisor, and as mayor struck up a sister-city relationship with Shanghai. On the 2006 trip Feinstein spent time with former Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji, “a good friend.”
Areddy asked about the Tiananmen Square massacre then turning 21. Feinstein said it was a “a great setback for China in the view of the world,” a public-relations problem for China, not a human rights issue. “It was just the PLA (People’s Liberation Army)” and China “learned lessons from it.” Still, Feinstein admitted, “we did not discuss it.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Sen. Feinstein’s ties to China are “way deeper” than any Chinese spy in her office. Feinstein maintained a “strictly apologist line” on China’s human rights atrocities, and Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely” during her career in the Senate. Sen. Feinstein “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” For two decades and three election cycles, Feinstein harbored a Chinese spy who fed “political intelligence” to Beijing’s Communist regime. Since that article, the dossier has grown longer.
As Rosemarie Ho noted in The Nation, Dianne Feinstein failed to support the democracy protesters in Hong Kong. When the coronavirus hit these shores, Feinstein was uncritical of China and one of the first to cry “racism” against those who pointed out the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China.
Ben Weingarten wondered how a motivated and empowered prosecutor would operate if tasked to explore “any links and/or coordination” between the Chinese government, Feinstein and individuals associated with her office. Such an investigation never took place with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the most servile apologist of Communist China since Anna Louise Strong, and certainly the most influential. On the other hand, Donald Trump was thoroughly investigated for “collusion” with Russia, which turned out to be a hoax.
It was the president’s tweet that brought Feinstein’s Chinese spy to public attention. President Trump has access to all U.S. intelligence, a major reason domestic and foreign foes alike are desperately trying to remove him from office. In his April 19 press conference, the president called the upper reaches of the DOJ and FBI “human scum,” and their inattention to Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and other high-profile Democrats confirms that the rot continues.
President Trump is now throwing down with the invisible enemy of coronavirus and making progress despite opposition from Democrats and their media allies. As they parrot Chinese propaganda, the president has already started the decoupling process.
“We cannot outsource our independence,” the president said last Monday. “We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I’ve been saying this for a long time. If we’ve learned one thing it’s let's do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.”
As with the USSR, we don’t need China for anything. And as Chuck Berry said, anything you want they got right here in the USA.

Joe Biden? Seriously?

The establishment narrative on Joe Biden is, to put it mildly, malarkey. Gropey J actually is everything the liberals accuse Donald Trump of being – bizarre, vulgar, dumb, corrupt, incompetent, and utterly unfit to be president. But yet the Creepy Veepy is so much more. In the last month, this totally not-senile, not-at-all-weird guy has assembled a track record of freaky behavior that would put mid-eighties Crispin Glover to shame. 
Let’s review…
Corn Pop is old news. Biden’s latest rambling onion-on-the-belt monologue was something about little kids at a pool rubbing his leg hair or something – it’s so random I’m not even linking to it. There’s no best-case scenario here – he’s just creepy.
Then, for no other reason than I guess he felt like a snack, he started gnawing on his wife’s fingers in public and on camera. You know, like people do. You wonder what the thought process there was…
Hey, sure are lots of cameras…gosh, I’m kind of hungry…oh look, an index finger. Yum.
I’m a little surprised he didn’t pull out a packet of ketchup.
But the best part was when some guy pointed out that, you know, Biden’s loser son Lil’ Crackpipe is the poster child for corruption and Sane Joe started spazzing out and calling him “fat” and challenging him to a push-up contest for some reason.
This is just odd. And this is the candidate who, amazingly, is still in the lead for the Democrat nomination.
And then there’s the groping females thing. He still does it occasionally, though the media does its best to curtail coverage of his lecherous creeping. Do you believe there’s any chance at all that he is not going to, at some point, have some horrifying incident with some female at the White House, you know, like grabbing the Queen for a hug n’ rub, or walking absent-mindedly into the press room in a flapping robe with Little Joe and the gang in effect? 
And let’s be charitable. No one has ever called Joe Biden “smart.” Well, maybe as a joke. The fact is that he’s a 40-watt guy in a 100-watt world. Haters say Trump is dumb, but he is demonstrably not dumb. The thing about Trump is that because our garbage elite hates him it tends to ascribe all possible negative characteristics to him regardless of whether they apply. Trump is cunning, crafty and has a keen sense of strategy. You may dislike him, but that does not change the fact that alone, against the full force of the elite and its media serfs, he prevailed and continues to prevail. If Trump, who managed to figure out that it would be a good idea to campaign in Wisconsin, is dumb, what does that make Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit and the sobbing losers who supported her?
No one can seriously argue that Joe Biden is smart, and no one does. They’ll either call you “racist” or start complaining about Trump. But you won’t get anyone comparing the former veep to Stephen Hawking. They just sort of elide past his staggering stupidity, perhaps hoping that whoever he picks for his veep will give him a rubber ball to play with and lock him in an Oval Office closet when it's time to do some presidenting.
He’s a totally corrupt swamp thing, and here’s the worst part of his manifest corruption – he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s corrupt, if not personally than in terms of allowing his bum kid to leverage his position. He thinks it’s A-OK for his boy Hoover to cash in all over the globe. After all, that’s what you do, right? That’s part of the benefits package for being in the liberal elite. And all these people fussing and fighting about the paternity test-failing dirtbag getting rich are totally out of line. How dare they? HOW DARE THEY!
Understand that Biden sees nothing wrong with this. Nothing. And that means there will be exponentially more of it. Hell, the useless DoJ under Trump won’t prosecute obvious graft. Do you think a DoJ that’s thrilled to have a fellow traveler back in the White House is going to root out Biden's business badness? You do? Well, then meet my unicorn Chet.
And SloJoe is utterly incompetent. This is the guy who thought they should let bin Laden skate. As Robert Gates, no Trumpie, said, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.
This is the guy who wants to take your doctor, again, and impose another brilliant healthcare reform idea, again – all designed to unscrew the last big healthcare reform the Democrats passed, which he praised as “a big [vulgarity] deal.
He wants to obey that tiresome Swedish teenager’s commands to sacrifice at the altar of the weird weather cult. He wants to appoint all Hawaiian and Scat Franciscan judges. 
He wants to raise taxes, open the borders, let you pay for illegal aliens’ sex changes, and spark a civil war by taking guns from the people who don’t commit crimes.
When you think of a calm, steady, wise presence guiding the nation, you do not think of Joe Biden, though that’s what is allegedly needed to end the nightmare of the Trump presidency – you know, the record job numbers and the lack of stupid new wars. You think of Obama and Stumbles McMyturn, only dumber and touchier.
Just recently, Biden’s campaign ran an ad alleging that foreigners were “laughing” at Donald Trump. Is there any Democrat anywhere who takes America’s side in a dispute with malicious aliens? In any case, those tin pot euroweenies had plenty to cry about – Donald Trump has forced them to pay up for NATO. Of course, that will end too if Joe takes office. We’ll return to business as usual – the business as usual of being shafted for the benefit of the global bigshots.
Basically, we’ll get rid of all the peace and prosperity that Trump has brought and get back to normal – that is, people like us being plundered by the garbage elite.
Trump has a track record of success, and Democrats hate him. Joe has a track record of failure, corruption, and creepiness. Well, I guess we know why the Democrats seem to love him.
It’s out now, my new novel Collapse, the action-packed yet hilarious sequel to People's RepublicIndian Country and Wildfire. Friendless loser Never Trumpers hate it, so you’ll love it.
***One last thing.  On Wednesdays, there's BONUS KURT if you're a Townhall VIP member.  Sign up today.  Three Kurts is better than two.
And here's the biggest laugh of all: the Democrat party's only hope is a confused old man whose corruption is oozing into the 
open only because the Democrats wagered everything on impeaching President Trump.

What to do About China

Much the same way that the Nazis invasion of Poland in the 20th century, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) assaulted the world with a biological agent. Instead of Panzer divisions rolling down the streets of Warsaw, Communist China’s invisible biological warfare has stricken the world with economic and human misery, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and forcing millions into unemployment lines globally.
Expansionist China is clearly a military, economic, and health threat to the world. But it’s reckoning time for the Chinese communist dictatorship. Washington should exert diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on Beijing that will put China’s dictator Xi Jingping, and the evil and corrupt CCP under enormous strain.
Here are four suggestions to counter China’s biological, military and economic threats:
Economic Distancing: Seize China’s U.S. Treasury Notes
For America, the China virus attack was a 21st century medical Pearl Harbor, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties and placing our healthcare system under enormous strain. To counterattack China’s criminal negligence and mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic, the U.S. needs to hit our communist comrades where it hurts the most -- their pocketbooks.
China owns approximately $1.07 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, according to the Treasury Department. The United States government should seize the Chinese treasury obligations that Beijing holds in their name, and inform the CCP that this is a down payment for the death of tens of thousands of American citizens and the economic devastation Beijing has unleased on the U.S. economy. And the U.S. should encourage Canada, the U.K., Japan, Switzerland, and other allies to do the same.
Academic Distancing: Shutter China’s Confucius Institutes in the U.S.
The nefarious CCP pumps over $10 billion into its Confucius Institute propaganda machine, funding over 500 Confucius Institutes on high schools, colleges, and university campuses around the world. In the U.S., there are over 100 Confucius Institutes on high school, college, and university campuses, receiving over $150 million from the Chinese communist dictatorship, according to National Association of Scholars.
The Chinese Ministry of Education, which is run by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department, infiltrates high schools, colleges, and universities, brainwashing American students  into accepting communist China propaganda, textbooks and operating funds to enhance its own image abroad. Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes lack transparency, threaten academic freedom and give the Chinese communist despots access to the U.S. education system that China does not extend to American programs, according to a 2019 report by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
All Confucius Institutes in the United States should be shut down, and all Chinese “teachers” deported. America must end China’s unfettered access to our research centers and universities. Also, the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, based in Washington, D.C., should be shuttered.
Seize and Sell all CCP Property in the U.S.
The Chinese Communist Party is our enemy, so why don’t we treat them that way? Let’s start by seizing all CCP property in the United States and selling it as reparations for the damage they have caused to our economy. The U.S. federal government should impound and sell all CCP property in the U.S., including companies, real estate, bank accounts, aircraft, ocean-going vessels, and all other CCP assets in the USA.
Bring Back “Made in the USA”
The U.S. federal government should pay U.S. manufactures to leave China and return to the USA. It’s time to bring U.S. manufacturing back home. Americans want to buy high-quality “Made in the USA” products; not cheap Chinese junk that breaks right away. To encourage U.S. manufactures to make products in the United States, the U.S. federal government should offer companies a 100 percent federal tax relief for 10-years if they open and produce products here in the USA.
It won’t be easy or painless, but America ought to fundamentally reconsider its relationship with China. It is imperative that we have a “hard decoupling” of the U.S.-China relationship, according to political scientist Andrew A. Michta, writing in the American Interest. It’s time to reduce our reliance on China as a manufacturing base.
Only one adversary poses a truly mortal challenge to the United States; that adversary is China.
Now that the Chinese Communist Party has murdered tens of thousands of people globally, the U.S. and its allies are being held hostage by the criminals that run the CCP. China is repeatedly singled out for its unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, support for rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran, proliferation of nuclear arms, cyberattacks on free societies, widespread human rights abuse at home, and undermining international institutions. And now, you can add bioterrorism to the list.
It’s time to cut our ties with Communist China. This is a very dangerous time for the world.  We should expect that the CCP will become more repressive domestically, aggressive internationally, and confrontational in the wake of the China virus.
And one final thought: Let’s make the China plague the last Chinese import into the U.S.A.
Octavio Nuiry is a former New Orleans Times Picayune columnist. He can be reached at onuiry@gmail.com or (562) 537-2901.

The Democratic Party Is Wounded and Dangerous

Beware the wounded animal.  In pain and desperation, it will do violent things.  It seems to me no coincidence that Joe Biden's big win on Super Tuesday was followed by Democratic senator Chuck Schumer threatening conservative members of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Joe Biden is hardly Lancelot to President Trump's dragon.  The Democrats and the Deep State needed a first-class warrior; instead, their best option is a walking advertisement for Alzheimer's awareness.  In his best days, Joe Biden was the political equivalent of Jack McCall, shooting his adversaries in the back.  When he wasn't using his position of power for financial gain or stealing other people's words, he was helping his family line their own pockets.  Today, he's a disoriented and stumbling shell of an unimportant political hack who looks on in confusion while his wife does his fighting for him.  If you've ever wondered what happens to the shriveled soul of a lifetime liar and Democratic swindler, just cast your eyes upon Old Joe.  He's a walking, talking effigy of Democratic corruption and amorality.  He's what the Democratic Party usually keeps far off the main stage for the back-alley entertainment; now he's the main event, but no amount of stick-prodding by Donna Brazile or Tom Perez is going to turn Joe Biden into Fred Astaire.  He's a freak-show carnival attraction at best, amazing onlookers by his ability to occasionally jumble audible words together into a sentence.  The Democrats needed a man who could command a movement; all they got was a man who can barely control his own.
I'm not saying President Trump's re-election is in the bag.  Far from it.  We've never seen such an array of villains acting in concert to take down an American president.  The Democratic Party has most of the permanent bureaucratic Deep State (as well as stealthy anti-Trump Republicans), Wall Street, Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, cosmopolitan Europe, global warming doomsayers, the Middle East's worst terrorists, and domestic Antifa terrorists here at home all actively working to dislodge President Trump from the White House.  In the past, the chiefs of our intelligence agencies and clandestine services retired into relative obscurity, cognizant that duty commanded their silent withdrawal into the pages of history.  After orchestrating a coup against the American president, however, it is not unusual to see the former heads of Obama's CIA, FBI, and NSC all tirelessly justifying their criminal acts on cable news each night.  The corporate news media and institutional government have spent years trying to gin up enough hysteria in the nation that mock beheadings of the president and ritual re-enactments of his assassination during summer theater might lead the American people to clamor for the real thing.
So, no, the 2020 election will not be over until all the votes have been counted on November 3, and it becomes clear that we have successfully preserved Western civilization for at least a little while longer from this most recent manifestation of Vienna's bloody 1683 siege.  All I am saying is that Joe Biden was never meant to be the establishment's champion for resurrecting their oligarchic power.  They wanted a formidable presidential nominee, someone who could check all the right identity politics boxes while stringing words together that were substantively meaningless while singularly inspiring.  Instead, they're settling for a politician past his expiration date who sounds less crème de la crème and more soused in crème de menthe.  The Democratic Party may depend on dead voters to win elections, but running dead candidates is another thing altogether.
So just because the cable news anchors and Carville clones are all high-fiving each other and cheering for managing to narrowly prevent a communist disciple of Stalin and Castro from sewing up the Democratic nomination for president by the beginning of March, don't forget how disappointed they are at heart.  If Biden goes on to clinch the nomination, the Democratic Party will have managed to take all the aloof, plain, manila-folder blandness of John Kerry and combine it with the alertness and energy of a nursing home after pill rounds.  This is the one whom the commentariat is celebrating right now, the guy Obama and the gang blocked from running in 2016 because they felt him not quite up for the challenge when he was four years younger.  The vice president during the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, the wordsmith who marveled at Obama for being strangely "articulate" for a black guy, and the obtrusive shoulder-rubber whose chief political instinct was to sniff the hair of the wives and daughters of White House officials and visiting dignitaries.  Imagine being in such dire straits because the previous Democratic president so hollowed out the party's future by losing over a thousand elected officials across the country during his time in office that the last, great hope to beat President Trump this year is just hoping to make it to bed each afternoon before saying something so inappropriate or illogical or ridiculous that Red Bernie becomes the Democrat's Dear Leader by default.  For every minute of his few wakeful hours, his handlers have to be on constant guard against the possibility that a voice in Biden's head will scream, "Oh, look, a young child with wonderful-smelling hair."  "Comeback Joe"?  More like "Come back, Joe!"
The Democrats and the Deep State have spent the last four years constructing the greatest wag-the-dog spectacle America's ever seen in an attempt to cover up the malfeasance and criminality of the last administration, while preventing the current one from achieving too many victories.  Considering that Brennan and Comey are still free and Obama and Hillary are still smiling, they've been remarkably successful.  But the Mueller obfuscation and Schiff circus are behind us, the dance music of delay is dying down, and the Democrats' and Deep State's ability to keep pushing back their day of reckoning is coming to an end.  If they don't win in 2020, they cannot keep justice at bay, regardless of how stacked in their favor it has always been in the past.  And standing in the gap as their last-ditch prospect to save them from President Trump's re-election and spare them from long delayed judgment is none other than Corn Pop's archenemy.  The one "reasonable" Democrat in the race who has already burnished his "moderate" credentials by fully embracing Bernie's Green New Deal, Warren's Medicare for All, and Beto's door-to-door gun confiscation.  Nothing says "electable centrist Democrat" like "D'oh!" Biden's full tilt toward Marxist socialism.  No wonder Chuck Schumer sounds like some injured animal in the forest, lashing out at tree branches all around him.  That's what small, weak, dying creatures do when they know the end is near.
Image: Lorie Shaull via Flickr.

Cruz: China ‘the Single-Greatest Political Threat the United States Faces over the Next Century’

2 May 2020111
1:30
Saturday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) outlined the threat communist Asian superpower China poses to the United States, calling it the “single-great political threat” to the country over the next 100 years.
“China is in my judgment the single-greatest political threat the United States faces over the next century,” he said. “They engage in espionage. They engage in censorship. They engage in torture and murder of their own citizens. They cover up free speech.”
Cruz pointed to legislation that he was introducing. One imposes sanctions on Chinese government officials for the coronavirus “coverup,” as he deemed it. Another he was introducing took aim at Hollywood for kowtowing to the Chinese government in movie scripts.
“The Script Act says we’re not going to allow the Pentagon to cooperate with moviemakers, to let them use ships and jet airplanes and equipment if they are going to allow the Chinese government to censor,” he said. “And so it uses the power of government to stop Chinese censorship through Hollywood.”
The Texas Republican U.S. Senator pointed to the soon-to-be-released sequel to “Top Gun,” which stars Tom Cruise. Reportedly, the Japanese and Taiwanese flags were removed from a jacket worn by Cruise’s “Maverick” in the sequel at the behest of Chinese censors.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor