Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. And congress in general.

It’s true. It’s all true. The Republicans have squandered and continue to squander their house and senate majorities. 

What a bunch of idiot law makers we have.  

For eight years, they balked and balked about Obama’s reign and the democrat congress that passed Obamacare. And now, once the Republicans regain the house, the senate, and the presidency–they disappoint. 

Why is there no leadership in congress? Why are there no uniting forces at work?

I often think that the answer is simple: there is no more Conservative party. And there is no more Republican Party.  And the same for the other side. We no longer have a two-party system: we have a splintered set of six or seven different parties. All with varying degrees of whatever.  

The result: no decisions can be made. No consensus reached. 

They all should be ashamed of themselves. A year has nearly passed. And next to nothing has been accomplished. Keep up the arguing folks!  You’re really doing a great job! Yeah!

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China’s Grip Tightens. Makes me sad.

Read this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40651951

It’s entitled, “Is WhatsApp Being Censored In China?”

I don’t know if it is, and it’s been a couple years since I lived there, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The number of apps, messaging services, and news reports being censored in China has been growing tremendously. 

News that any discussion or mentions of Liu Xiaobo and the darkly shrouded circumstances of his death have been wiped from all media in China too is sad. I love China, but it absolutely is a love-hate relationship because I hate that so much information is being kept from their people. 

Granted, I know the United States keeps a lot of information from its people too. And I know the United States has its share of devious politicians and machinating bureaucrats, but it’s certainly not so blatant. 

I often wonder which is worse: the Chinese government censoring everything and everyone knows it, or the Western governments hiding things from us, but without most people knowing–because of course much is kept from us. Food for thought–because in China, since everything political is censored and free speech doesn’t exist, it means no one ever really has political discussions, so no friendships are lost and rarely do tempers flare over such issues.  So there is a plus side–sort of. 

But truky, the most chilling part of that article I just posted is that apparently China is starting to blocks the VPNs themselves. And worse, is starting to censor the content of private messsages. For the first time, I learned that WeChat (which I use to communicate with all my many friends in China) is unencrypted.  Intuitively, I guess I always knew that, because I knew the Chinese government was always watching us, but I don’t think it hit me as forcefully as it did just today. They are reading all of our messages–and that’s disturbing.