White Mountain Links

1. Raise Hand, Now Lie!

"The Chinese authorities are really stepping up their anti-Dalai Lama rhetoric and propaganda," Anne Holmes, acting director of the Free Tibet Campaign, said in an e-mail on Sunday.

During a public meeting in December in Lithang in the Kham area of Gansu province, which is populated largely by Tibetans, residents were asked to raise their hands if they opposed the Dalai Lama’s return. No one obliged, the campaign group said.

Residents were then asked to raise their hands if they did not have weapons at home. As it is illegal to possess firearms, everyone raised their hand. A photo was then taken and sent to state media, claiming residents were opposed to the Dalai Lama’s return, the Free Tibet Campaign said.

2. No "Smut" in China

3. More Nuclear Secrets between Enemies

4. Just Called to Say "I Need You!"

5. You Can Never Return Home to North Korea

6. Take the Authoritarian Challenge!

7. Paul Krugman’s Article about China (Not the One about Obama)

8. The Dark Side of the Rosy China Scenario

9. Baby Steps in Foreign Aid

10. Iowa Aftermath

Massacre Foretold

Now, The Economist is having that dream again, this time with graphic violence:

The party’s blooming prospects in the Senate matter hugely. The Senate ratifies treaties, confirms all the president’s important appointments, and tries him if he is impeached. It also allows a cabal of 41 senators to block legislation indefinitely. It is unlikely that the Democrats will reach the magic 60 votes which allow them to break Republican filibusters and force bills to a vote: but if they get close to it, they will much improve the chances for a Democratic White House to muscle through a list of planned reforms, on health care, climate change, immigration and taxes.

The likelihood of this is growing by the day. The Republicans have always faced a tough fight in 2008. They are defending 21 seats compared with the Democrats’ 12. They are also defending seats that they won in 2002 when George Bush was wildly popular – his approval ratings are half what they were then – and the Republicans were seen as America’s natural champions against the perpetrators of September 11th, 2001. But it is beginning to look as if a tough fight could turn into a massacre.

(…)

The Republicans have a few straws to clutch at. They point out that someone other than Mr Bush will be leading the party into battle in 2008. They note that the Democrats have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The anti-war left in particular has a genius for alienating the silent majority: witness its decision to impugn General Petraeus’s patriotism by dubbing him General Betray-us.

The Republicans are in with a chance of picking up a couple of seats?in South Dakota, where the incumbent is ailing, and in Louisiana, where the Democratic-voting population has not recovered since the great flight after Katrina. But that hardly evens the field. In the wake of their 2006 thumping, the Republicans thought that they could recover given the narrowness of the margins in many Senate races. But the mood among Republicans in the Senate is gloomier now than at any time since Watergate, and many moderates are breaking ranks with the leadership. “It is always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench,” one Republican pollster told the Washington Post. They will be lucky if is just the one pipe wrench.

One other quote from that last WaPo article explains why I’m not counting scalps just yet.

Fisher conceded that fundraising has been difficult in the current political climate, but she said the race for cash is picking up. And she predicted that if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) secures the Democratic presidential nomination, Republicans will come to the polls in droves.

There’s no family more politically polarizing than the Clintons, at least if the Bushes aren’t considered. And, Americans seem to enjoy watching Democrats and Republicans go to war in a divided government.

Strategy for Success