90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

TRUMP'S TRADE DEAL WITH CHINA IS A BLOCKBUSTER

What the Democrats fear most is happening: President Trump and his negotiating team are reaching wide-ranging agreements with China that will be a huge boon to the United States.

In an Oval Office press conference yesterday, President Trump and China’s Vice Premier announced a Phase 1 set of agreements that will be documented over the next several weeks. The video of the press conference is embedded below; Trump’s performance was masterful. His many years of experience as a negotiator shine through.

The Phase 1 agreement covers several important topics, including agricultural sales. China has agreed to ramp up its purchases of agricultural products to $40-$50 billion–three times the previous peak–over the next two years. Trump joked that farmers will need to buy more land and work overtime. That means, I think, that Democrats can say goodbye to hopes that tariffs would be the issue that could win votes in rural America.

The agreement also opens up China’s financial services markets to American companies, covers currency manipulation, and addresses some aspects of intellectual property and technology transfer agreements. Phase 2 negotiations will begin immediately.

In view of the Phase 1 agreement, new tariffs scheduled to go into effect on October 15 have been canceled. Further tariff increases are scheduled for December 15, but Trump and Steven Mnuchin, who participated in the press conference, emphasized that there is plenty of time to reach a Phase 2 agreement that would nullify those increases. Phase 2 could be the final agreement, or, if there are still open issues, there could be a Phase 3.

Many are saying that the Chinese willingness to enter into this wide-ranging agreement shows that they understand impeachment is a joke, and expect that President Trump will be re-elected. In fact, Trump himself said exactly that in response to a question: “They expect that I’m going to win. Otherwise they wouldn’t sign the deal. It’s very simple.” If Trump can get our relationship with China straightened out well in advance of the election, with economic benefits becoming visible, the main obstacle to his re-election will, in my opinion, be removed.

Here is the press conference in its entirety:

Where Is Hunter?

Free Speech Or Chinese Money?

One Lost, It Will Require Blood To Get Back.

Blizzard From Red China Blows Across the Video-Gaming Community

The China-symp appeasers at Google and the NBA have much to learn from these honorable players.

International video game giant Activision-Blizzard has been caught in a veritable storm of bad press after a decision was made this week to suspend a professional player and tournament winner of its digital card game Hearthstone.

Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai, a Hong Kong native, had participated in an interview with two Taiwanese hosts after a tournament match during which he donned a mask and said, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Blizzard laid the hammer on Blitzchung, who was banned for a year and forced to hand over his tournament earnings. Even more shockingly, the video game giant also fired both reporters who conducted the interview, despite their lack of participation in anything having to do with protesting China’s treatment of Hong Kong.

Of course, this sparked immediate outrage from the gaming community. Reddit, a locus of the Blizzard fandom, second perhaps only to the official forums, had multiple threads on the subject reach the front page, with hundreds of thousands of people disavowing Blizzard’s behavior. Even now, it remains awash in anti-Chinese and Blizzard-related memes.

Longtime fans of the company’s games boycotted in anger, vowing to never play Activison-Blizzard games ever again and deleting their accounts. Longtime Hearthstone professional player and caster Brian Kibler quit an upcoming convention called BlizzCon. U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) publicly shamed the company on Twitter. And a Norwegian parliament member, Grunde Almeland, sent the company a letter warning it may not be welcome to host tournaments in the country unless it reverses its decision to blitz Blitzchung.

It’s good to see that this despicable display united both sides of the political aisle. The cowardly assault on free speech in Hong Kong by the communist Chinese government has finally brought bipartisanship back to the Swamp.

Blizzard “justified” its ruling in an announcement on October 8, 2019. But the company’s strange behavior at this point escalated. Shortly afterwards, its Reddit page became invitation-only. Players reported being banned for more than 1,000 years on Blizzard forums. A coach for another Blizzard game, Overwatch, was told to delete a tweet criticizing the treatment of Blitzchung. A company that offered to reimburse Blitzchung’s winnings and offered him a spot in its own game, Gods Unchained, came under undisclosed cyberattacks.

The most egregious aspect of the whole sordid episode is that Blizzard caved and offered an apology — to the Chinese. On the Chinese social network website Weibo — which is heavily censored by its oppressive government — Blizzard’s Chinese Hearthstone account released a statement apologizing for the behavior of Blitzchung and stating that “we will always respect and defend the pride of our country.”

Such behavior only goes to show how far companies are falling over themselves to appease President Xi Jingping and his communist censorial cronies. It should come as no surprise that Chinese gaming giant Tencent owns about 5 percent of Activision-Blizzard stock. Caving to the demands of the Chinese is part of its modus operandi. Blizzard refers to...