Excellent reporting on a shameful display by GOP senators like Ted Cruz. One wonders if those profiting from access to the massive Chinese market are more important than those suffering under a repressive and brutal regime to grandstanders like Cruz. Sam, I’d love to interview you for my Substack newsletter, The First Person, sometime soon.
I don't think it's double standard from Ted Cruz. You could be a victim of the 'narrative' as the heavily biased DNC media you've been reading sets the tone for every piece you read, telling you what to think. When you ran into apparent consistencies, the media used weasel words to sand off the critical differentiating details hoping you'd ignore the pieces of info that doesn't add up and parrot the conclusion they wanted (Like "***** is bad"). It's an old technique used by propagandists, including but not limited to the CCP.
The reason Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley opposed the DEMOCRAT-PROPOSED Hong Kong People's Freedom and Choice Act of 2020 (HKPFCA) back then was because Democrats took advantage of Hongkong to piggyback their own partisan agenda in the details (namely extending what's offered to victims of political persecution in Hongkong to everybody else without much due diligence) while the Republican proposed version already offered the same assistance to Hongkongers without making the window wider than necessary. When Macro Rubio, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley supported Hongkong, they did it out of shared values (freedoms, rule-OF-law and liberal democracy), not looking for opportunities to sneak in their own routine partisan agenda like the democrats did (remember the dems sneaking in funding to 'Gender studies in Paksistan' in a coronavirus relief a gigantic reconciliation bill that nobody had enough time to read through?).
Macro Rubio is often the more flexible among the 3 so he smartly compromised with the democrats in exchange for boosting and expediting the assistance to Hongkongers, but it doesn't mean what democrats did was honorable. The democrat controlled mainstream media you've been quoting your sources from spun the news that de-emphasized the fact that Democrats took advantage of the situation to blackmail Republicans through bundling.
You missed the train spinning the narrative against the Ted Cruz and Hongkong people quickly figured out it was the partisan blackmailing and the fight is over whether the D's version or the R's version of the bill gets passed, so very few of the Hongkongers blamed Ted Cruz for the opposition and most of the ones who still believe in this narrative by now are heavily left-leaning expats. HKPFCA extends the very same benefit to CCP-supporting HK Residents in addition to the ones persecuted by the CCP! There were some heated debates among Hongkongers whether we should prefer a faster escape route in exchange for letting the very evil CCP supporters take advantage of it, and the consensus was that while Ted Cruz's due care was honorable, but we'll just take whatever we can get as we were not in a position to be picky! We are not going to speak ill of the people who helped us genuinely out of common value, not common interests, just because they disagree on a hair-splitting detail!
People in Hongkong have already seen the solid track record of the 3 (actually there's a lot more like John Kennedy but I can't list them all here) so we are more open to hearing their side of the story when there are accusations for them being way off basic human decency. People in Hongkong has grown exponentially wiser politically since 2019 so they are not as easily fooled by narratives that has a lot of holes in it just because that's what they wanted to hear and will dig deeper than the news/clickbait headlines!
Ted Cruz is basically supporting democrats' bill to help Ukraine because he knows we no longer have the option not to since Putin started unless we want to toss the US into the depths of hell (See Ted's explanation of his reasoning: https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1528379151236747264?s=20). I think you were unfairly bending what 'double standard' means when you said "... no accusations that Democrats were using the Ukraine crisis to push a radical immigration agenda" because the Ukraine crisis is largely used by the democrats to siphon taxpayers' money for handouts for Biden's buddies in the military industrial complex, not a tool for loose immigration practices like what the democrat's proposals of the Hong Kong related bills. Biden is benefiting from his failure in Afghanistan withdrawal, which tempted Putin to attack, and how we're stuck dumping money to drown the forest fire so his military-industrial friends can get rich. How convenient! Biden's not a hero, he's just cleaning up the messes he started, and the clean up process is exactly what he's interested in!
What's really double standards are democrats' treatment towards refugees from places like Cuba who are likely non-left-leaning so they don't bring value turning into dem's future voters. That's why we kept quiet when HKDC and the more prominent pro-dems politicians in HK tow the BLM narrative to please the dems when the majority of anti-CCP people in Hongkong know BLM is communist bullshit that replaced the farmers-vs-landlords class struggle with race struggles. HK protests did not go and rob stores in the name of social justice. Those who trashed exclusively CCP-stores or stores who defended CCP's tyranny rounded up joy-riders who attempted to loot the CCP-stores they've vandalized. BLM doesn't come even close in the moral discipline. The BLM organizers didn't even say a word when the HK police was brutalizing protesters in 2019. That's how we can tell people's moral bottom-lines. This alone was enough ground for freedom fighters in Hongkong to largely not side with BLM. Antifa tried to hijack HK protests as well, but Hongkong was a city built by refugees who were victims of communism, so their children won't easily buy into socialists' sugar-coated lies and mind tricks as there are still living victims of communism who can see the Leninist playbook a mile away. People in Hongkong would have voted for a ham sandwich in 2019 district council election as long as they are not pro-CCP, but yet Hongkongers' just couldn't hold their nose and vote for a socialist (Trotskyist, a variant of Marxist-Leninist) 'Long-hair' (Leung Kwok-Hung) so he lost despite the anti-CCP candidates won most of the seats.
Most of the Republicans are not worried about LEGAL immigrants. They are only worried about ILLEGAL immigrants. You are conflating the ideas as you might have fell for the same straw man techniques used by the CCP and the DNC-media who are largely occupied by the radical left 'journalists' who threw away their journalistic integrity for their political activism in the last 5 years. I was stuck for years at the company who sponsored my green card. Imagine how I'd feel when ECONOMIC immigrants can come ILLEGALLY and jump in line skipping years of paperwork and costs. Your stance will change if we have a 'eat your own dog food' policy that whoever that wants an open border must house at least 2 immigrants and PERSONALLY pay for all their associated costs. Uniting for Ukraine program (https://www.uscis.gov/ukraine) are more responsible to the US citizens because it really did what I've just said: those who genuinely want to help (not just virtue signaling) honestly bear the costs for sponsoring the immigrant. Kudos for the democrats who didn't take advantage of Ukraine for the open borders agenda. We are fine with refugees and asylum who have a genuine need (being persecuted and have high risks of getting imprisoned, killed, or unimaginable things done to them), not because they are poor or starving.
Most of the moderate Republicans (not the crazy ones picked on by the DNC-media) merely asked to be fair and reasonable with practicalities. "Eat your own dog food" is what we sorely need to be the ultimate rule of the land above the constitution, so the totalitarianism supporters cannot insidiously destroy the foundation of the country and be home free because they do not directly bear the costs of the laws they've proposed. This alone will exorcise all the socialists and the democrats will be sane again!
Back then when the bulk of the democrats hadn't lost all their basic moral bottomlines, they will think through whether the rule they proposed can come back and bite them when the tables are turned, just like Joe Biden spoke against packing the Supreme Court. Now they simply don't care. Power is everything: if you don't use it, you lose it. That's CCP's mentality.
I'd urge you to consider watching "China Uncensored" and "America Uncovered" on youtube as they try to be fair and mock both sides of the aisle and the did serious research that I cannot easily pick flaws on: if they have something interesting yet cannot be verified, they'd be honest about it upfront. Yes. They mock Trump, just not as frequently as the far-left mobs in the DNC media did.
By the way, I wrote emails to the democrat house representatives in NC listed on your voter registration (public record. turns out it was the first thing search engines came up with when I entered your name. didn't intentionally try to pry as I was searching for the news & case footage) and shouted out to them on Twitter multiple times and asked them to help when you were unjustly persecuted & prosecuted by the Hongkong CCP kangaroo court, and emphasized you are their voter. No response, not a single peep. :(
There is a lot to say on how we could change that. If we admit that sea level rising has to be compensated on one hand, and if we admit on another hand that our dependencies to chinese workforce is killing us as a superpower, then the relevance of sea steading will appear even to the more stubborn republican and the more spineless democrat. It all depends how we put it. Floating cities can afford a solution to shelter refugees while adressing the legitimate concerns about safety and also about the real estate bubble that those refugees would induce if allowed massively to the mainland. Job sharing also will permit to adress labour shortage and dependencies. Job sharing would also permit to constitute "growth potential". Good job anyway, Sam !
Excellent reporting on a shameful display by GOP senators like Ted Cruz. One wonders if those profiting from access to the massive Chinese market are more important than those suffering under a repressive and brutal regime to grandstanders like Cruz. Sam, I’d love to interview you for my Substack newsletter, The First Person, sometime soon.
I don't think it's double standard from Ted Cruz. You could be a victim of the 'narrative' as the heavily biased DNC media you've been reading sets the tone for every piece you read, telling you what to think. When you ran into apparent consistencies, the media used weasel words to sand off the critical differentiating details hoping you'd ignore the pieces of info that doesn't add up and parrot the conclusion they wanted (Like "***** is bad"). It's an old technique used by propagandists, including but not limited to the CCP.
The reason Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley opposed the DEMOCRAT-PROPOSED Hong Kong People's Freedom and Choice Act of 2020 (HKPFCA) back then was because Democrats took advantage of Hongkong to piggyback their own partisan agenda in the details (namely extending what's offered to victims of political persecution in Hongkong to everybody else without much due diligence) while the Republican proposed version already offered the same assistance to Hongkongers without making the window wider than necessary. When Macro Rubio, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley supported Hongkong, they did it out of shared values (freedoms, rule-OF-law and liberal democracy), not looking for opportunities to sneak in their own routine partisan agenda like the democrats did (remember the dems sneaking in funding to 'Gender studies in Paksistan' in a coronavirus relief a gigantic reconciliation bill that nobody had enough time to read through?).
Macro Rubio is often the more flexible among the 3 so he smartly compromised with the democrats in exchange for boosting and expediting the assistance to Hongkongers, but it doesn't mean what democrats did was honorable. The democrat controlled mainstream media you've been quoting your sources from spun the news that de-emphasized the fact that Democrats took advantage of the situation to blackmail Republicans through bundling.
You missed the train spinning the narrative against the Ted Cruz and Hongkong people quickly figured out it was the partisan blackmailing and the fight is over whether the D's version or the R's version of the bill gets passed, so very few of the Hongkongers blamed Ted Cruz for the opposition and most of the ones who still believe in this narrative by now are heavily left-leaning expats. HKPFCA extends the very same benefit to CCP-supporting HK Residents in addition to the ones persecuted by the CCP! There were some heated debates among Hongkongers whether we should prefer a faster escape route in exchange for letting the very evil CCP supporters take advantage of it, and the consensus was that while Ted Cruz's due care was honorable, but we'll just take whatever we can get as we were not in a position to be picky! We are not going to speak ill of the people who helped us genuinely out of common value, not common interests, just because they disagree on a hair-splitting detail!
People in Hongkong have already seen the solid track record of the 3 (actually there's a lot more like John Kennedy but I can't list them all here) so we are more open to hearing their side of the story when there are accusations for them being way off basic human decency. People in Hongkong has grown exponentially wiser politically since 2019 so they are not as easily fooled by narratives that has a lot of holes in it just because that's what they wanted to hear and will dig deeper than the news/clickbait headlines!
Ted Cruz is basically supporting democrats' bill to help Ukraine because he knows we no longer have the option not to since Putin started unless we want to toss the US into the depths of hell (See Ted's explanation of his reasoning: https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1528379151236747264?s=20). I think you were unfairly bending what 'double standard' means when you said "... no accusations that Democrats were using the Ukraine crisis to push a radical immigration agenda" because the Ukraine crisis is largely used by the democrats to siphon taxpayers' money for handouts for Biden's buddies in the military industrial complex, not a tool for loose immigration practices like what the democrat's proposals of the Hong Kong related bills. Biden is benefiting from his failure in Afghanistan withdrawal, which tempted Putin to attack, and how we're stuck dumping money to drown the forest fire so his military-industrial friends can get rich. How convenient! Biden's not a hero, he's just cleaning up the messes he started, and the clean up process is exactly what he's interested in!
What's really double standards are democrats' treatment towards refugees from places like Cuba who are likely non-left-leaning so they don't bring value turning into dem's future voters. That's why we kept quiet when HKDC and the more prominent pro-dems politicians in HK tow the BLM narrative to please the dems when the majority of anti-CCP people in Hongkong know BLM is communist bullshit that replaced the farmers-vs-landlords class struggle with race struggles. HK protests did not go and rob stores in the name of social justice. Those who trashed exclusively CCP-stores or stores who defended CCP's tyranny rounded up joy-riders who attempted to loot the CCP-stores they've vandalized. BLM doesn't come even close in the moral discipline. The BLM organizers didn't even say a word when the HK police was brutalizing protesters in 2019. That's how we can tell people's moral bottom-lines. This alone was enough ground for freedom fighters in Hongkong to largely not side with BLM. Antifa tried to hijack HK protests as well, but Hongkong was a city built by refugees who were victims of communism, so their children won't easily buy into socialists' sugar-coated lies and mind tricks as there are still living victims of communism who can see the Leninist playbook a mile away. People in Hongkong would have voted for a ham sandwich in 2019 district council election as long as they are not pro-CCP, but yet Hongkongers' just couldn't hold their nose and vote for a socialist (Trotskyist, a variant of Marxist-Leninist) 'Long-hair' (Leung Kwok-Hung) so he lost despite the anti-CCP candidates won most of the seats.
Most of the Republicans are not worried about LEGAL immigrants. They are only worried about ILLEGAL immigrants. You are conflating the ideas as you might have fell for the same straw man techniques used by the CCP and the DNC-media who are largely occupied by the radical left 'journalists' who threw away their journalistic integrity for their political activism in the last 5 years. I was stuck for years at the company who sponsored my green card. Imagine how I'd feel when ECONOMIC immigrants can come ILLEGALLY and jump in line skipping years of paperwork and costs. Your stance will change if we have a 'eat your own dog food' policy that whoever that wants an open border must house at least 2 immigrants and PERSONALLY pay for all their associated costs. Uniting for Ukraine program (https://www.uscis.gov/ukraine) are more responsible to the US citizens because it really did what I've just said: those who genuinely want to help (not just virtue signaling) honestly bear the costs for sponsoring the immigrant. Kudos for the democrats who didn't take advantage of Ukraine for the open borders agenda. We are fine with refugees and asylum who have a genuine need (being persecuted and have high risks of getting imprisoned, killed, or unimaginable things done to them), not because they are poor or starving.
Most of the moderate Republicans (not the crazy ones picked on by the DNC-media) merely asked to be fair and reasonable with practicalities. "Eat your own dog food" is what we sorely need to be the ultimate rule of the land above the constitution, so the totalitarianism supporters cannot insidiously destroy the foundation of the country and be home free because they do not directly bear the costs of the laws they've proposed. This alone will exorcise all the socialists and the democrats will be sane again!
Back then when the bulk of the democrats hadn't lost all their basic moral bottomlines, they will think through whether the rule they proposed can come back and bite them when the tables are turned, just like Joe Biden spoke against packing the Supreme Court. Now they simply don't care. Power is everything: if you don't use it, you lose it. That's CCP's mentality.
I'd urge you to consider watching "China Uncensored" and "America Uncovered" on youtube as they try to be fair and mock both sides of the aisle and the did serious research that I cannot easily pick flaws on: if they have something interesting yet cannot be verified, they'd be honest about it upfront. Yes. They mock Trump, just not as frequently as the far-left mobs in the DNC media did.
By the way, I wrote emails to the democrat house representatives in NC listed on your voter registration (public record. turns out it was the first thing search engines came up with when I entered your name. didn't intentionally try to pry as I was searching for the news & case footage) and shouted out to them on Twitter multiple times and asked them to help when you were unjustly persecuted & prosecuted by the Hongkong CCP kangaroo court, and emphasized you are their voter. No response, not a single peep. :(
There is a lot to say on how we could change that. If we admit that sea level rising has to be compensated on one hand, and if we admit on another hand that our dependencies to chinese workforce is killing us as a superpower, then the relevance of sea steading will appear even to the more stubborn republican and the more spineless democrat. It all depends how we put it. Floating cities can afford a solution to shelter refugees while adressing the legitimate concerns about safety and also about the real estate bubble that those refugees would induce if allowed massively to the mainland. Job sharing also will permit to adress labour shortage and dependencies. Job sharing would also permit to constitute "growth potential". Good job anyway, Sam !