#American Pundits

[xtruss]

Inadvertent Self-harm

— Liu Rui | January 21, 2024

Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

American Pundits Predicting China’s Economic Collapse Doomed To Fail

— Wen Sheng | January 21, 2024

Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times

After the National Bureau of Statistics recently reported major economic indicators, including yearly GDP growth, industrial output, consumer and factory prices, domestic retail and import and export volume, housing investment and demographic changes for 2023, some Western media pundits seem to be delving into narratives to prove that China's economy is in dire straits, "stumbling" or even "collapsing."

The New York Times published an essay on Thursday entitled "China's Economy Is in Serious Trouble", authored by American economist Paul Krugman. In the article, he opined that Chinese economy "seems to be stumbling," with the announced official data showing that "China is experiencing Japan-style deflation," and "there's reason to believe that China is entering an era of stagnation and disappointment."

It is not the first time Krugman has decried the Chinese economy. In last August, he penned another opinion piece under the sensational headline "How Scary is China's Crisis?" in which he claimed that China "seems to be teetering on the edge of a crisis that looks a lot like what the rest of the world went through in 2008," pointing to the last global financial crisis triggered by the US' chaotic subprime debacle.

But the economic crisis that Western pundits like Krugman wrote or hoped for isn't happening in China at all. They have been spinning a story on a hypothetical crisis to engulf and tear down the world's emerging economic giant, and others are gloating over it. They will be disappointed again.

Actually, the strength of China's unique social system and the resilience of the Chinese economy, tested by the 1997 and 2008 financial crises and other events like the Biden administration's repulsive trade and technology war, should not be underestimated and denigrated by pundits. By all metrics, it is truly a great feat in human history to build a country as large as China from scratch in 1980 to its present size of nearly $18 trillion, or more in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms.

Official statistics revealed that the Chinese economy expanded by 5.2 percent in 2023 from the previous year to reach more than $17.5 trillion, as it rebounded from three years of anti-coronavirus control measures. Compared to merely 3.0 percent rise in 2022, the 5.2-percent growth last year is significant and impressive, obviously being one of the highest growths reported by the world's major economies.

As the single biggest engine of global economic growth, all of China's neighbors and trade partners, including those in Latin America, Africa and Europe, have become aware of the business opportunities created by China. With their factories, ranches and ports increasingly intertwined with China's, these partner economies are rapidly thriving. So it can be presumed that one of the untold reasons leading Western pundits to criticize China and its economy is to muddy the waters and plant seeds of doubt among China's major trade and economic partners.

US politicians have attempted to suppress China and hinder its growth by imposing high tariffs, sanctions, and restrictions on tech exports. They have also made attempts at "decoupling," which have been witnessed by the whole world in the past few years. However, those efforts have been unsuccessful. Now, pundits in the US media and academic circles want to support their politicians to go even harder at China, in their desperate hope to frighten away China's business partners and international investors interested in buying Chinese yuan-denominated assets and diversifying their investment portfolios to reduce their holdings of US dollar assets.

In his essay "How Scary is China's Crisis?" Krugman stated that China's government debts were "unsustainable," facing the "Minsky Moment" - meaning an impending implosion of the fiscal crisis. Many months have passed, yet the world hasn't seen a debt crisis in China.

Compared with the US government which added up to $7 trillion to its federal debts since the COVID pandemic to a total of more than $34 trillion, and it is running more than $1 trillion debt each year, China certainly is in a better fiscal shape. China has more than $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserve and has a very positive current account balance. Also, Chinese households' bank savings rate is much higher than their American counterparts. Correspondingly, China has more tools and means to accelerate economic stimulus over coming years to ramp up fiscal spending and cut savings rate to ramp up investment and inspire domestic consumption.

Chinese economists believe that the country has more room to maneuver to support government spending on a wide variety of projects and services, including rural infrastructure, urban utilities and amenities, technology innovations, expansion of manufacturing plants as well as improving its sprawling social safety net, including pension coverage for the retired people and better medical care for all newborns and other citizens.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are rapidly catching up in research and development for new technologies. For example, the country is leading the world in producing clean renewable energies and exporting batteries, electric cars and other higher value-added products. Although China's urban housing sector is undergoing a correction after more than two decades of heated growth, the slowdown could be offset or mitigated by the boom in auto production and new-energy transformation.

As for the allegation that China "is entering an era of stagnation" similar to Japan's "Lost Two Decades," it is a preposterous assumption or Western pundits' wishful thinking about the Chinese economy. Any economist won't consider an economy with a trajectory of more than 5-percent annualized expansion to be falling into "stagnation." China's policymakers have the ability to issue more government bonds by raising the budget deficit ratio to 3.8 or 4 percent of GDP in 2024, which is still dwarfed by the US' 6.3 percent federal budget deficit ratio in 2023, to ratchet up economic activity and consumer prices. The policymakers' only concern is they don't want to leave a heavier burden on future generations.

When all of these factors are considered, there is no reason to be alarmed about China's growth. In comparison to the US, where the cost of living from housing rent to groceries to medication remains high, coupled with political infighting and dysfunction, China has a much more nimble decision-making system and can turn things around efficiently. American pundits, driven by ideology, have been predicting an imminent collapse of the Chinese economy since early this century, but so far, they haven't succeeded.

— The Author is an Editor with the Global Times.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Citing ample evidence of human rights abuses in U.S. immigration detention centers, 200 advocacy groups on Thursday demanded that the Biden administration reverse course on a planned expansion of detention facilities and said President Joe Biden's "further entrenching" of the government's reliance on detaining migrants marks "an utter betrayal" of his campaign promises.

The president's signing of a spending bill last month provided $3.4 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), clearing the way for the agency to make space to jail 41,500 immigrants per day in facilities across the country.

After Biden campaigned on ending the use of for-profit detention centers, said the groups, he took office at a time when fewer than 15,000 people were being held in immigration detention facilities—which gave him "a remarkable opportunity to wind down a wasteful and abusive system."

But after the president's 2023 and 2024 budget requests signaled an intention of reducing detention funding—with ICE itself recommending that numerous facilities be closed due to "critical staffing shortages that have led to safety risks and unsanitary living conditions"—Biden last year requested supplemental detention funding as commentators and Republicans in Congress hammered the administration for allowing so-called "chaos" at the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Your FY2025 budget request sought funding for 34,000 beds instead of the 25,000 sought in the two previous cycles," wrote the groups, including Amnesty International USA, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), and the Texas Civil Rights Project. "The result is unsurprising: the FY2024 spending bill you signed provides ICE $3.4 billion to jail an average of 41,500 immigrants per day, historically high funding surpassing all four years of the Trump administration."

...

Biden signed the spending bill two weeks after Charles Daniel, a 61-year-old migrant from Trinidad and Tobago, died at a detention center operated by the private contractor GEO Group after being held in solitary confinement for four years. ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times in the last five years, according to PHR, for an average of 27 days each; U.N. experts say exceeding 15 days in solitary confinement constitutes torture.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chloe Simon at MMFA:

After a week of right-wing media spreading baseless smears about Haitian migrants abducting and eating pets, conservative activist Christopher Rufo posted a video allegedly showing a cat on a barbecue grill in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton police have issued a statement saying “there is no evidence to even remotely suggest” that any community is eating pets — but some in right-wing media ran with the story, claiming that Rufo’s video falsely “confirmed” the rumors about migrants and animals. 

Last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, promoted baseless and racist rumors about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. During the September 10 presidential debate, Trump claimed, “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Right-wing media also jumped on the narrative, calling Haitian migrants “locusts,” zombies,” and “weird Third World aliens.” [The Associated Press, 9/11/24; Media Matters, 9/10/24]

On September 14, Rufo posted a video purportedly showing a cat on a barbecue with the caption, “EXCLUSIVE: We have discovered that migrants are, in fact, eating cats in Ohio. We have verified, with multiple witnesses and visual cross-references, that African migrants in Dayton, the next city over from Springfield, barbecued these cats last summer.” Rufo did acknowledge in his Substack that “this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs.” However, he continued that the video “does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its ‘fact checkers’” and that “independent journalists are already on the hunt and could reveal more.” Prior to releasing the video, Rufo claimed he would “provide a $5,000 bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/24, 9/11/24; Substack, 9/14/24]

Rufo, a senior fellow at conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, is a conservative activist known for his right-wing crusades against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and higher education. Media Matters has described his career as a long attempt to “inject bigotry and incorrect information into mainstream discourses about gay and trans people, drag queens, and the academic discipline known as critical race theory.” [Vox, 9/10/23; Media Matters, 1/6/23, 7/27/23; The Guardian, 2/21/24]

Dayton police have categorically denied that any group has “engaged in eating pets.” In a statement, the department wrote, “We stand by our immigrant community and there is no evidence to even remotely suggest that any group, including our immigrant community, is engaged in eating pets. Seeing politicians or other individuals use outlandish information to appeal to their constituents is disheartening.” Rufo’s video has also received a lot of backlash online, with open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander writing that it was “clearly chicken you weirdo. Dude’s never seen chicken that wasn’t dino-nugget shaped.” In a further attempt to verify the video’s claims, CBS News reached out to veterinary experts who cited the image’s poor quality, while another “noted the legs looked ‘weirdly distended’ and in his opinion, did not look like cat legs.” [Twitter/X, 9/16/24, 9/14/24; The Independent, 9/15/24; CBS News, 9/16/24]

Right-wing disinformation purveyor Christopher Rufo posted a video purporting that cats were cooked on a barbecue grill in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton PD, however, shot down Rufo’s rumor-mongering by stating that there is no evidence of cats being grilled in Dayton.

[mrjinx87]

The term “unskilled labor” is kinda bullshit. Most jobs require some sort of skill to get done right. The only job that doesn’t require any sort of skill is conservative media personality.

Seriously, say what will you will about junk food, but people still got to eat. What purpose do people like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk offer exactly? Just look at their most recent videos up above. Are you telling me that their content benefits society in any way whatsoever? The average McDonald’s worker offers more to society than literally every single Republican talking head with a YouTube channel.

Anyway, point is, the American worker should be properly compensated. Raise the minimum wage.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

*

[lechusza]

The latest clown show

This is one incredible clown show! The irate emotional drama stumps any current sitcom. Oh, man, what a way to end a confused week. The first 3 minutes alone are worth it. Give it a fair shake. Then, take a long shower to remove the verbal grime. alanlechusza.org bloodsweatpray.store https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BumLZpFRvRw #news #politics #usnews #pundits #bien

[sorry-i-call-it-soccer]

I don't care about the us men's team!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[alexbkrieger13]

https://x.com/womenxfootball/status/1799493605595259352?t=dg-rEqjxG7AgNlJH03aS5w&s=19

[talkingpointsusa]

I made a tier list of right wing figures based around how much I hate them.

Forgot Fuentes but he'd be under rage inducing.

[thealogie]

Can you please elaborate on the Stephen Colbert RPF thing. This is a judgment free zone I’m just deathly curious

Ah yes well you see Stephen Colbert used to play a parody of a Fox News pundit on a show called The Colbert Report (American news satire program popular in the late 00s/early 10s). The character was explicitly a closeted gay man who was driven to conservatism due to his own insecurity/internalized homophobia. He had a homoerotic relationship with Jon Stewart whom he pretended to hate but had several romantic moments with.

When their shows ended they wrote a soft epilogue for their fictionalized selves where they retire to a cabin in the woods together and it’s implied they’re married now. The most beautiful self-written rpf of all time.

It was a beautiful slow burn self-written rpf that unfolded over, like, 10 years they worked together? It started as a joke but ended up being a genuine canon part of the fictionalized Stephen Colbert? I’m not joking.

[robertreich]

The Truth About Immigrants and the Economy

Immigrants are good for the economy and our society! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

For centuries, immigration has been America’s secret sauce for economic growth and prosperity.

But for just as long, immigrants have been an easy scapegoat.

One of the oldest, ugliest lies is to falsely smear immigrants as criminals.

It’s just not true. Crime is way down in America. Anyone who says otherwise is fearmongering.

And whatever crime there is is not being driven by immigration. Immigrants, regardless of citizenship status, are 60% less likely to be incarcerated for committing crimes than U.S.-born citizens.

Maybe that’s why border cities are among America’s safest.

Immigration opponents also claim immigrants are a drag on the economy and a drain on government resources.

Rubbish!

Quite the opposite, the major reason immigrants are coming to America is to build a better life for themselves and their families, contributing to the American economy.

The long-term economic benefits of immigration outweigh any short-term costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding more immigrants as workers and consumers — including undocumented immigrants — will grow America’s economy by about $7 trillion over the next decade. And those immigrants would increase tax revenue by about $1 trillion, shrinking the deficit and helping pay for programs we all benefit from.

Immigrants of all statuses pay more in taxes than they get in government benefits. Research by the libertarian Cato Institute found first-generation immigrants pay $1.38 in taxes for every $1 they receive in benefits,

This is especially true for undocumented immigrants, who pay billions in taxes each year, but are excluded from almost all federal benefits. After all, you need documentation to receive federal benefits. Guess what undocumented immigrants don’t have. Hello?

And of course, one of the most common anti-immigrant claims also isn’t true.

No. Immigrants are not taking away jobs that Americans want. Undocumented immigrants in particular are doing some of the most dangerous, difficult, low-paying, and essential jobs in the country.

Despite what certain pundits might tell you, immigration has not stopped the U.S. from enjoying record-low unemployment.

And as the Baby Boom generation moves into retirement, young immigrants will help support Social Security by providing a thriving base of younger workers who are paying into the system. The fact that so many immigrants want to come here gives America an advantage over other countries with aging populations, like Germany and Japan.  

What’s more, immigrants are particularly ambitious and hardworking. They are 80% more likely to start a new business than U.S. born citizens. Immigrant-founded businesses also impressively comprise 103 companies in last year’s Fortune 500.

And immigrants continue to add immeasurably to the richness of American culture. We should be celebrating them, not denigrating them.

It’s time to speak the facts and the truth. We need immigrants to keep our economy — and our country — vibrant and growing. They are not “poisoning the blood” of our nation. They’re renewing and restoring it.

[heritageposts]

During the recent “March for Israel” in Washington, DC, Al Jazeera interviewed a confident young man from Connecticut about the war in Gaza. Draped in an Israeli flag, Charlie appeared ready to answer any question. He made it clear from the outset that the ongoing war is not “Hamas vs Israel”, but “Hamas vs the whole world”. He said he regrets children’s deaths and prays for innocent lives lost. But he had no doubt about who is responsible for the death of civilians in Gaza. While Israel does everything to avoid civilian casualties, he said, Iran-backed Palestinian terrorists bomb their own hospitals, use civilians as human shields, and even place kids next to rocket launchers. Iran and its proxies are the source of all evil in Palestine and the region, he added. Charlie has clearly done his homework. He has studied the Israel Project’s “Global Language Dictionary [PDF]”, memorised its lines, and repeated them verbatim, not missing a beat. The playbook was created in 2009 after Israel’s first war on the besieged Gaza Strip, to guide Israel’s supporters on how best to speak to the media about the conflict. Inspired by Israel’s leading spin doctors, such as Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, it is directed at young activists, as well as politicians, pundits, journalists and more. It tells its readers what to say, and what not to say, alerting them to words that should be used and others that mustn’t. One of my favourite tidbits in the playbook, as I wrote back in 2014, goes like this: “Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel’s military history. Particularly on the left, this does you harm.” And when civilian casualties mount during wartime in Gaza, the playbook recommends talking empathetically along these lines of “All human life is precious”, but emphasising that “it is a tragedy that Iran-backed Hamas shoots rockets at our civilians while hiding in their own” and that this “causes tragic deaths on both sides”. Sounds familiar?

. . . continues on Al Jazeera (20 Nov 2023)

PDF of the Israel Project’s "Global Language Dictionary"

[steveyockey]

Measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The government killed McVeigh by lethal injection in June 2001. Whatever hesitation a state execution provokes, even over a man such as McVeigh — necessary questions about the legitimacy of killing even an unrepentant soldier of white supremacy — his death provided a measure of closure to the mother of one of his victims. “It’s a period at the end of a sentence,” said Kathleen Treanor, whose 4-year old McVeigh killed.

McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century.

The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds.

No infamy will find Kissinger on a day like today. Instead, in a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get away with it, the day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress and — shamefully, since Kissinger had reporters like CBS’ Marvin Kalb and The New York Times’ Hendrick Smith wiretapped — newsrooms. Kissinger, a refugee from the Nazis who became a pedigreed member of the “Eastern Establishment” Nixon hated, was a practitioner of American greatness, and so the press lionized him as the cold-blooded genius who restored America’s prestige from the agony of Vietnam.

Not once in the half-century that followed Kissinger’s departure from power did the millions the United States killed matter for his reputation, except to confirm a ruthlessness that pundits occasionally find thrilling. America, like every empire, champions its state murderers. The only time I was ever in the same room as Henry Kissinger was at a 2015 national-security conference at West Point. He was surrounded by fawning Army officers and ex-officials basking in the presence of a statesman.

[charlesoberonn]

If all American conservative politicians and media pundits get simultaneous urinary tract infections tomorrow, it was me.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

I'm pretty pessimistic about attempts to dissuade the United States from bankrolling Israel's atrocities. I'm to young to remember much of Iraq but I know we did this whole song and dance then and nothing changed it still happened an a lot of people died. This is not really a pessimism I can voice to any of my friends as we are all struggling to figure out how to resist. I'm voicing this to you because I've long enjoyed your blog and consider your writing to be principled will still empathic and that is very important.

Behind the scenes, American officials also believe there is limited time for Israel to try to accomplish its stated objective of taking out Hamas in its current operation before uproar over the humanitarian suffering and civilian casualties – and calls for a ceasefire – reaches a tipping point.

In fact, there is recognition within the administration that that moment may arrive quickly: Some of the president’s close advisers believe that there are only weeks, not months, until rebuffing the pressure on the US government to publicly call for a ceasefire becomes untenable, sources told CNN.

Even aside from the above, I think Palestinian solidarity rn is in a pretty different position from the antiwar movement in the lead up to Iraq. Iraq was the culmination of decades of neoconservative organising with the invasion as its end goal; the current aid to Israel is a response to an increasingly inconvenient and unruly ally, with whom the current administration (odious as it is) is already expressing frustration. The support for the iraq war among mainstream pundits and officials was virtually unanimous; already we are witnessing dissent on the Gaza war reach high places. And most importantly, the protests against iraq were comparatively narrowly focused and time-bound, while the campaign for Palestinian liberation is a decades long international movement that has made real strides, especially in the U.S. The same kind of international movement that eventually helped the ANC to bring down apartheid in South Africa. There’s some room here for optimism of the intellect as well as of the will

[reading-writing-revolution]

What The Fuck is Wrong with You?

Elect Biden and shut the fuck up about his age.

Donald J Trump is arguably the most ignorant, disgusting, demented man that anyone in America can name. Why are Democrats, news pundits and internet morons continuing to talk about Biden being old?

Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government of the United States of America and lost over 60 lawsuits to that effect. He incited and supported an insurrection that saw Americans attack the Capitol and try to capture or kill American lawmakers.

Who the fuck cares if Biden is old?

Donald J Trump named three Supreme Court Justices who ended Roe v Wade and have now rendered the Separation of Powers and check and balances in the US Constitution as "null and void."

Biden is just 3 years older than Trump, and who cares?

Donald Trump goes on insane, meandering, half-baked rants at political rallies, slurring his words, unable to complete sentences, losing track of his thoughts, and calling for Americans to be hurt, have their rights taken away and worse. He treats everyone around him, including other Republicans, like trash.

But Biden is old.

Donald Trump pretended that COVID was a hoax, suggested the American people ingest bleach to fight it, and smeared the leading scientists battling COVID, which resulted in about a million deaths in the United States in a year.

But Joe Biden is pretty old.

Donald Trump was accused of rape by over 20 women, found guilty of sexual assault in 2024 and made lurid comments about his own daughter. He also cheated on all three of his wives, including his latest wife while she was pregnant. Then he tried to cover it up by paying hush money to a porn star.

Biden is an old guy.

Donald Trump banned Muslims from America, put thousands of people in cages at the border and tried to get the Ukrainian president to lie about Joe Biden.

But Joe Biden isn't a youngin anymore.

Trump said African nations were "shithole countries" and said white supremacists were "very fine people." Trump said immigrants were taking "Black jobs". He also ignored the hurricane catastrophe in Puerto Rico, which took 3000 lives.

But Biden is old.

Trump's family foundation was found to have ripped off charities, he's banned from doing business in New York, and his daughter and son-in-law received $2 billion from the Saudis at the end of his presidency. He's bankrupted or failed in every business he's ever had, from Trump Steaks to Trump Air to Trump University to all the casinos.

But hey, Biden is old.

Trump did a deal with Afghanistan to let the Taliban out of prison so they could (and did) take over the country. He's sided with Putin against NATO. He said nothing about the Saudis killing a journalist. Donald Trump eased restrictions on loan sharks, exploded the deficit and made friends with North Korea. He told over 3000 lies.

But old Joe is old.

Biden is old.

Donald Trump is easily the worst human being anyone has ever encountered, and all anyone can talk about is how old Biden is. What the fuck is wrong with you?