Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Chinese Democratic Fire Drill

Rich Galen

Friday October 21, 2005

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From the John F. Kennedy School
Harvard University

The Annual MULLINGS Subscription Drive continues!

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Doo, bee, doo, bee, doo. I got a horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, and here's a guy who knows that says the weather's clear �

Done? Good. Thanks.

This is why actually reading a newspaper made of actual paper is different than reading a newspaper made of bits and bytes. You would not, online, probably have seen this tease on the front page of yesterday's Financial Times:

"China's government issued a justification of its commitment to autocratic rule by the Communist party � Page 3"

Thumbing over to page three, in a piece by Mure Dickie, we find that our Communist friends and trading partners in Beijing (ne� Peking) have produced a "white paper" which explains a curious definition of democracy as it exists in China.

Chinese democracy, to slightly paraphrase Winston Churchill, is a wonton wrapped in an egg roll inside a moo shi pancake.

According to the FT, the Red Chinese patiently explained to the ignorant West that:

"Democratic government is the Chinese Communist party governing on behalf of the people � while upholding and perfecting the people's democratic dictatorship."

For most of us - at least for those of us who are not buyers for WalMart scouring China for cheap (but not, as we see, free) labor - the notion of a "democratic dictatorship" is an oxymoron.

Like Senatorial Humility.

In the category of: When-the-Federal-Deficit-is-$671-Jillion,-What-Should-We-Spend-Money-On? comes a great idea from Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Stevens wants to earmark $3 Billion to subsidize the purchase of a device which would convert a regular TV set into one which can receive digital television signals, which all telecasters are supposed to provide by 2009 or so.

If that is approved, and it might be given the spending convulsions that the Congress is enduring, look for infomercials beginning next year by lawyers offering to sue the Asian company which manufactured your crappy analog television along with the pond-scum retailer that sold it to you (because they knew or should have known that when you bought it, in 1975, it would be useless for receiving digital signals in 2009) for damages associated with the pain, suffering and embarrassment of having to accept Sen. Stevens' paltry sum to upgrade your set.

Then look for those same major American electronics dealers (whose wares were produced by the cheap-but-not-free workers in the Democratic Paradise of Communist China) to demand that Senator Stevens introduce legislation shielding them from such law suits so they can "continue to provide vital, real-time information to the American people as a matter of national security and homeland defense."

I shoulda been a lobbyist.

This is yet more evidence that the United States has become the most Socialist country in history. Compared to our current premise that the Federal government is responsible for immediately fixing any thing, for any one, in any place, at any time, Sweden is the ultimate every-man-for-himself society.

Last thought of the week: If Global Warming is as pervasive as we have been led to believe, then this winter's temperatures should be abnormally warm and people won't be as devastated by spiking heating oil and natural gas prices as they would have been had we not been producing greenhouse gasses like cows in the milking shed all these years.

We should be demanding that coal-fired power plants be restarted all over the nation.

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On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A reference to today's while-I'm-waiting-song, a link to a previous Harvard Travelogue, the actual Churchill quote, a Mullfoto, and a poetic Catchy Caption of the Day.

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