I can't stand the French and Germans. That's it. There's no more. Second rate powers do not deserve a say at the big kid's table. Especially, when they have trouble keeping their schadenfreude under wraps. (via Stephen Den Beste)
The only thing that's worse than hearing our "allies" try to leverage their positions into cheap oil, it's hearing the Democratic Party's nincompoops talk bemoan our fouled relationships with those ungrateful sh*ts.
But, it's okay -- we don't really need the "Axis of Weasels". Why? Because we're closer to the Chinese than we've ever been:
"Neither we nor the Chinese leadership anymore believe that there is anything inevitable about our relationship, either inevitably bad or inevitably good," Powell said. "We believe that is up to us together to take responsibility for our common future."
Indeed. It seems that we are both in the midst of reappraisal, and that we are both liking what we see. Maybe that's because we look more and more similar every day:
"Today's China is more capitalist than many capitalist societies," says Ding Xueliang, a professor of social science at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology. "You cannot talk about it, but you can do it."China's constitution does not yet guarantee private property rights. It says China is a "socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants."
News reports last week said the party's 356-member Central Committee will debate amendments to "promote economic and social development" at an annual meeting in October. The reports gave no details, but experts said the changes might include a first-ever guarantee of property rights.
As Robert Prather points out:
There hasn't been a revolution that throws communism in the dustbin, but a quiet realization that, if they wish to prosper, capitalism is the only economic system that can deliver the goods. Now, if we could only get Europe to realize the same thing.
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