Don,

Try to get all your letters written/sent early next week instead of waiting until Wednesday. Did you see this article? Rep. Cleaver (Missouri) wants to pass a resolution making the day before Thanksgiving a “Complaint-Free Day.”

While not wasting time to analyze the obvious Orwellian aspects of such a stupid resolution, it’s instead a much better proof point of just how drunk with power this class of politicians is.

Past performance is no guide for the future. May be past performance can be used as a guide after all.

There was never any rational plane for US-China relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Normalcy” then was either love or hate.

The US Navy and the military establishment overall would likely be preferring hate and rekindle brinkmanship at the edge of Chinese air space. They don’t really hate China, but maybe they do need a hypothetical enemy to justify the overwhelmingly resources this peculiar American behemoth consumes.

In retrospect, Obama missed his golden opportunity to embrace Hu Jintao as a signal for a period of courtship. What is in the way? Maybe TV images are in the way. One can hardly imagine an embrace between the two leaders in front of TV cameras. Hu is too wooden.

But Obama is a master of words, and he should have been briefed on the Chinese respect for words and that his oratorical skill could really be used in front of a select Chinese audience who were there to dissect every word Obama uttered. Yes, love affairs for the Chinese can be much more subtle than public embraces. The classic pattern is “xin xin xiang in” or “heart to heart”. Should a love affair takes off the ground, then the two lovers would be full of fulsome praises for each other. After all beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Past performance is no guide for the future. May be past performance can be used as a guide after all.

There was never any rational plane for US-China relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Normalcy” then was either love or hate.

The US Navy and the military establishment overall would likely be preferring hate and rekindle brinkmanship at the edge of Chinese air space. They don’t really hate China, but maybe they do need a hypothetical enemy to justify the overwhelmingly resources this peculiar American behemoth consumes.

In retrospect, Obama missed his golden opportunity to embrace Hu Jintao as a signal for a period of courtship. What is in the way? Maybe TV images are in the way. One can hardly imagine an embrace between the two leaders in front of TV cameras. Hu is too wooden.

But Obama is a master of words, and he should have been briefed on the Chinese respect for words and that his oratorical skill could really be used in front of a select Chinese audience who were there to dissect every word Obama uttered. Yes, love affairs for the Chinese can be much more subtle than public embraces. The classic pattern is “xin xin xiang in” or “heart to heart”. Should a love affair takes off the ground, then the two lovers would be full of fulsome praises for each other. After all beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.