Jokes from an administration in disarray

Joke 1

1. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) accused China of trying to sabotage the development of a coronavirus vaccine on Sunday without providing details to back up his claims.

"We have got to get this vaccine done. Unfortunately we have evidence that communist China is trying to sabotage us or slow it down," Scott said on the BBC's "Andrew Marr Show."

Scott said China "won’t cheer" if the U.S. or England is the first country to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.....

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate...to-sabotage-slow-covid-19-vaccine-development

2. Using an analogy, a man sued his neighbour for either sabotaging or slowing down his "production process". When pressed by the judge for what evidence he was referencing for his childless woe despite ten years of futile attempts, the impotent man asked back angrily "My neighbour can't stop me having a baby, can he?"

"The evidence came from a spirit medium. ... I know nothing about black magic, so clearly there are things I can't discuss. ... I get provided information from the spirit medium. But there's evidence that he has been trying to either sabotage or slow it down. The spirit medium said my neighbour curses me nightly, even in his dreams, knowing that I work very hard every night to have a child," the infertile man responded.

 

Joke 2

....Rubio owes a measure of his early success in politics to Rivera. Rivera advised and stumped for Rubio in his first campaign for the state House in 2000. Once elected, Rubio repaid the favor and helped Rivera win a state House seat in 2002. The following year, Rivera was instrumental in helping Rubio collect pledge cards from fellow Republicans to eventually become the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House. A relentless political operative, Rivera popped up in seemingly every corner of the state throughout the year to pressure, cajole and win over GOP House members to support Rubio for speaker.

As the two climbed the rungs of power together in the Florida House, they decided to buy the home at 1484 Bent Willow Drive in the Timber Lakes subdivision for $135,000. The March 2, 2005, deed was executed about a week before the 60-day lawmaking session began that year. When Rubio was formally voted speaker, he was nominated by Rivera, who served as chairman of the Florida House Rules Committee during Rubio’s speakership in 2007 and 2008. The post gave Rivera life-and-death power over much of the legislation in the House.

Affable, intense and intelligent, Rivera was often a source of mystery to his colleagues in the part-time Florida Legislature. Year after year, his financial disclosure forms claimed income from the U.S. Agency for International Development. But years later, The Miami Herald reported that USAID had no record that he ever worked with the agency....

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/marco-rubios-house-of-horrors-116075

P.S. Even though Rubio has left the house of horrors, it won't be surprising that it would remain a haunted memory with him for the rest of his life.

 

Joke 3

1. ....the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes....

The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder. Nor does it violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but expressly except statutes such as the Insurrection Act...

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html

2. Renowned Trump critic Jack Holmes has pointed out that Tom Cotton, the Republican Senator from Arkansas, is "one of the most brazenly irresponsible people in elected office today".

Source: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a31468352/fox-news-coronavirus-misinformation-elderly-viewers/

I coin an idiom "Let a cotton brain wield an iron fist" which means "Let a brazenly irresponsible politician exercise total authority." That is certainly a recipe for disaster as it could put all his fellow countrymen in mortal danger.

 

Joke 4

1. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo censured the International Criminal Court at a press conference Thursday (11 June 2020) after the White House announced President Donald Trump had signed an executive order authorizing economic sanctions and visa restrictions on ICC officials involved in investigating U.S. service members.

A blitz against the ICC by Pompeo and other cabinet officials Thursday came three months after the court announced it had approved an investigation into members of the U.S. military and CIA for possible war crimes in Afghanistan....

The U.S. never consented to the ICC's founding document, the Rome Statute, and so is not subject to its judgment, according to Pompeo....

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pom...approves-economic-sanctions/story?id=71198898

2. John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump's (former) national security adviser, threatened on September 10 (2018) that Washington would impose sanctions against judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) if they proceed with an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed in Afghanistan by Americans.

"We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States," Bolton said. "We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans."....

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/explainer-w...r-international-criminal-court-/29484529.html

3. It is laughable that the US “will not allow American citizens to be prosecuted by foreign bureaucrats" but it could pass legislations or laws anytime to convict foreign citizens, even top officials, in absentia for alleged crimes committed in their own countries.

Furthermore, the US regime could go to great lengths to stalk foreign citizens and order its allies to arrest and extradite them to the US while objecting to American citizens being tried in foreign courts.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/about

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/po...nce-american-accused-spying-article-1.1003728

4. Here I coin the term "pomparroo" for an individual, an organisation or a country that makes a mockery of the rule of law with its double standards and dual role of criminal and judge in a "pomparroo court".

 

5. A secret report by Canada’s spy agency, finalised just hours before Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver in 2018, describes how her impending detention would “send shockwaves around the world” and provides evidence of “coordinated state misconduct” between the US and Canada against her, according to her lawyers.

The two-page Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report bolsters Meng’s case that she is a victim of an abuse of process, her lawyers said.

Completed the morning of Meng’s arrest on December 1, 2018, the report, according to the lawyers, says “advanced communication to the CSIS came from the [US] FBI”. Meng’s lawyers said it also provides a timeline for the forthcoming operation at Vancouver’s international airport.....

Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...spy-report-written-hours-meng-wanzhous-arrest

6. The two-page Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report confirms my long-held suspicion that the US has been tracking the movements of important targets, Chinese and non-Chinese, in order to take action against them at the ripe time. Nowadays, flight & hotel booking could be done long before the trip. The US intelligence agency must have obtained all the information long before Meng's trip, and scheduled the Sino-US summit meeting in Buenos Aires on the day of her arrest.

The US covert operation against the Huawei CFO once again reveals the true face of the global lawlessness of the "pomparroo".

 

Joke 5

1. President Donald Trump's top advisers, including those who appear most loyal, mock the president behind his back, former White House national security advisor John Bolton writes in his new book...

During Trump's later meeting with Kim Jong Un, Pompeo slipped Bolton a note saying that the president is "so full of shit," The New York Times reported, citing Bolton's new book. Pompeo's predecessor Rex Tillerson reportedly once called Trump a "moron" behind his back....

The former White House national security advisor writes in his memoir that shortly after he arrived at the White House, Trump's then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said: "You can't imagine how desperate I am to get out of here. This is a bad place to work, as you will find out."....

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/pompeo-mocked-trump-full-of-s-t-bolton-book-says-2020-6

2. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, outwardly one of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters, secretly disparaged the president and doubted his North Korea diplomacy, former top aide John Bolton says....

Pompeo, a conservative former congressman, was first CIA director under Trump and is one of the few senior advisers who has never clashed publicly with the mercurial president.

For Trump's birthday on Sunday, Pompeo wished Trump well on Twitter, writing: "We thank you for your leadership and all that you do for America."...

Source: https://www.barrons.com/news/pompeo...ea-efforts-ex-aide-bolton-01592432105?tesla=y

3. Et tu, Brute? (pronounced [ɛt ˈtuː ˈbruːtɛ]) is a Latin phrase literally meaning 'and you, Brutus?' or 'also you, Brutus?', often translated as 'You as well, Brutus?' or 'Even you, Brutus?'. The quote appears in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, where it is spoken by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, at the moment of his assassination, to his supposed friend Marcus Brutus, upon recognizing him as one of the assassins....The phrase is often used apart from the plays to signify an unexpected betrayal by a friend....

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute?

4. Similarly, I coin the term "ettupomp" for a person who appears most loyal and trustworthy but unexpectedly stabs you in the back.

 

Joke 6

1. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro lit into Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday, saying there's a "special place in hell" for a world leader who double crosses President Donald Trump.

"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," Navarro told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "And that's what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference."....

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/special-place-hell-trump-trudeau-navarro-635100

2. Maybe the White House trade adviser was also an adviser to Satan that he had such might and authority to reserve a "special place in hell" for Justin Trudeau or any foreign leader.

I conclude the post with my political satire from the "The Old Man of the Mountain" series:

Subtitle: Lei Tai ( 打擂台 )

Narrator: After many days of travelling, the priest arrived at an open space in a tribal region. There he found a huge crowd gathering around a raised platform, 24 feet by 24 feet and 4 feet high, without railings.

He spotted among the spectators an old friend who told him the tribal chief's eldest son would be defending his championship title in 10 consecutive years. The 10th annual mixed martial arts "lei tai" championship was a full-contact tournament with no protection for the fighters such as protective headgear and gloves.

There were no written rules or round limits, no weight categories and no referee. The fight continued until either fighter surrendered, was thrown or forced from the stage, was incapacitated or even killed. The winner would remain on the stage unless ousted by a stronger opponent. If there were no more challengers, he would become the champion. In other words, a fighter had to defeat countless opponents to become a champion.

As the defending champion, the tribal chief's son was the first martial artist to go up onto the stage and issued his challenge to the crowd below. One after another, he was challenged by 18 martial artists, but he swiftly demolished them in succession. The spectators could see him moving his mouth throughout the fights, but they could not hear what he was talking.

After 18 consecutive wins, he raised both his fists in the air as a gesture of victory and invited anyone among the spectators to knock him off. After waiting for a while, there seemed to be no more challengers. As he was about to declare himself the unbeaten champion in 10 consecutive years, a man in his early thirties suddenly leaped up onto the stage.

The defending champion said something softly to the new challenger. As the spectators could not hear the conversation, they took it as an initial greeting. As in his earlier fights, the defending champion kept muttering something throughout the fight. The challenger showed no response but kept fighting hard with a straight face. Unlike the rest, the challenger did not give up fighting after getting hit with a clean punch. After a long drawn-out fight, the defending champion was kicked off the stage like a football and carried away on a stretcher. Filled with curiosity, the priest turned to his old friend.

Priest: I am not surprised by the defeat of the undeserving champion. What's puzzling is the irrational behaviour of the first 18 challengers. Why should they concede defeat after exchanging a few light blows?

Old friend: Your question brings to mind my bitter experience in the 1st annual mixed martial arts "lei tai" championship 9 years ago. Despite the passing of time, I can still recall it as if it were yesterday. At that time, that so-called champion was 30 years old -- about the same age as me. He built the first "lei tai” platform in the tribal region and challenged all martial artists to a fight.

Among 30 martial artists, I was the first to challenge him on the elevated fighting arena. After exchanging greetings, he warned me in a whisper: "There's a special place in hell for any martial artist who dares to retaliate against my attacks. My father, the tribal leader, will arrange with Yama, the god of death, to invite you and your entire family to the underworld if you won't acknowledge defeat."

Throughout the fight, he used a combination of taunts and intimidation to pressure me into capitulation, labelling me “an embarrassment” and a “terrible martial artist”. “You are easily this region’s worst martial artist yet," he whispered so near that I felt his stinking breath on my face.

He continued taunting, "Honestly I think you have done a terrible job so far in your martial arts school. You should be ashamed to call yourself the grandmaster of your martial arts system. Well as I’m sure you know, I’ve closely followed news of whatever happening in your martial arts school all my life. And I think you've done such damage to your leadership that your disciples should rename it to like, gang leader or something more sounding, like mafia boss. You accept all kinds of characters into your school. You are the founder of a terrorist organisation in this region.

"You acted so meek and mild during our breakfast meeting this morning only to be the first challenger in my first mixed martial arts ‘lei tai’ championship, telling the other martial artists that my invitation to them to a duel is kind of insulting. You are very dishonest and weak. You have stolen many pupils from my martial arts school by regularly lowering your tuition fees. My punches are in response to your repeated theft. If you want to be the adult in the fighting arena, you need to behave like an adult."

Priest: It looked like the so-called unbeaten champion was conducting a psychological warfare to undermine your will to fight.

Old friend: Quite true. Accusing me and other martial artists of starting the problem by unfair competition, he said: "If you and other martial artists retaliate, you’re making a mistake. Due to unfair competition by all martial artists, my school's enrollment has decreased tremendously. There’s very bad spirit when I have a small enrollment and all of you keep taking away my students so my martial arts school can never catch up. That’s not a good thing to do. And I have very, very strong measures that take care of that. The numbers are so astronomically against all of you. I shall win this championship a thousand times out of a thousand. I shall not be pushed around. It’s going to change, 100%. My martial arts school is like the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing. And that ends."

So he kept taunting and insulting me throughout the fight. Gradually I lost my temper. If the gates of hell opened suddenly, I would not hesitate to throw him down below. However, I was aware of the catastrophic consequences of defeating him. My entire family and I, even my relatives would be executed by the tribal chief as punishment. Hence before any tragedy happened, I gave up fighting by leaping down the stage.

Priest: Did he use the same psychological manipulation techniques to force the others into submission?

Old friend: Yes, I found out from all the other challengers that he had used the same underhanded tactics against them in the past 9 years.

Priest: How did the spectators, particularly your disciples, respond to the outcome of your match?

Old friend: The spectators found it very puzzling why I should give up fighting for no rhyme or reason. Of course, they could not hear the big bully's taunts and intimidation because he uttered very softly, almost in a whisper. I was labelled as a coward and failure. My reputation was destroyed in the wake of my apparent defeat. Many of my disciples left to join his martial arts school. After some years I had to close my school because of declining enrollment.

Priest: Did the same thing happen to the others after their apparent defeat?

Old friend: Yes, many of their disciples went to learn martial arts from that so-called unbeaten champion. Many martial artists had to close their schools due to declining enrollment, and some of them had their schools taken over by the big bully.

 

Priest: Then how come the last challenger could dismiss all the threats and put up a good fight to become the new champion?

Old friend: The last challenger is deaf. That explains his apparent ignorance of the bully's intimidation, and his smashing success in smashing the crown of the undeserving champion to smithereens.

Priest: It seems that you know the last challenger very well.

Old friend: For many years after my apparent defeat, I suffered from depression and anxiety. Then I decided to exact revenge against the big bully. But I could not find any way to deal with him until I saw a busker performing acrobat jumping in a street. He is the best person to teach that big bully a lesson for the following reasons:

Firstly, his kung fu fighting techniques were superb. Actually that so-called unbeaten champion's martial arts system is not that superior. If not for his underhand tactics, the big bully could have been vanquished long ago by any challenger.

Secondly, he is an orphan without any family or relative, and a vagabond without a home. If the tribal chief wants to revenge his son's defeat, the only way is after the new champion’s blood.

Thirdly, and most important of all, he is deaf so he would be immune to the undeserving champion's taunts and intimidation.

Using sign language, I persuaded him to compete in the championship.

Priest: Did you inform him of the big bully's psychological manipulation techniques?

Old friend: No, I want to ensure that both his sanity and his will to fight will not be undermined by the enemy.

Priest: But he will be executed by the tribal chief if he stays behind to receive the prize money and be crowned the new champion.

Old friend: Although I did not inform him of the big bully's underhanded tactics, I had warned him of what might happen if he won the fight. Hence he would run for his life immediately after the fight. I had asked my old servant to wait for him with two horses -- one for each rider -- some distance ahead on the main road. I had given both of them more than enough money to last for the rest of their lives. By now, they should be heading towards a neighbouring tribal region on their horses. Down there, in my old servant's birthplace, they will live happily ever after.

Priest: Capitalism exists everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. Is there any betting on the championship?

Old friend: There was betting during in the first few years on the championships. But after five or six years, when the people found out that the same person always won the championship, they stopped betting altogether. I could have won a huge fortune if I place my bet on the new champion.

Priest: Why didn't you do so?

Old friend: I don't want to be the prime suspect of the big bully's defeat. I don't want the tribal chief to exact revenge on me.

Narrator: The spectators were awestruck at first when they saw the so-called unbeaten champion of 9 successive years kicked off the stage by a newcomer. Then the dead silence was broken by a huge applause. However, when they tried to look for the new champion, he was nowhere to be seen.

After bidding farewell to his old friend, the priest continued his journey, knowing somewhere in front of him two men were speeding on their horses toward the border of a neighbouring tribal land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_tai

 

Joke 7

1. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Monday the trade deal with China “continues in place’, walking back on his earlier remarks that the pact was ‘over’, stoking volatility in markets already frazzled by the coronavirus pandemic.

Navarro said his comments were taken ‘wildly out of context’, while U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed in a tweet the deal with the China was “fully intact”....

Earlier, Navarro told Fox News ‘it’s over’ in an interview when asked about the trade agreement.

He said the “turning point” came when the United States learned about the spreading coronavirus only after a Chinese delegation had left Washington following the signing of the Phase 1 deal on Jan. 15.....

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...feedName=businessNews&WT.mc_id=Partner-Google

2. Donald Trump tweeted on June 23, 2020 shortly after that:

"The China Trade Deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the Agreement!"

Source: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1275252814206447618

3. With two or more conflicting voices often coming out of the White House, particularly at a time when Trump's star seems to be fading, we may ask: “Who is the real master now?” Before the smart aleck could walk back on his earlier remarks that the trade deal was "over", those speculators who lost a huge fortune for no rhyme or reason during the short period of market volatility would be cursing and swearing. Some might even try to reserve a "special place in hell" for him.

 

4. After Navarro's "over" comments in an interview with Fox News, US stock futures quickly tumbled with the Dow Jones futures plunging more than 400 points. Instead of admitting that the statement he made was wrong, he denied saying that the phase one trade deal was "over", and blamed its "misunderstanding" on China in his "clarification".

5. "My comments have been taken wildly out of context. They had nothing at all to do with the Phase one trade deal, which continues in place," Navarro said in a statement, adding that his comments were made over the lack of trust toward the Chinese side due to the coronavirus issue.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1192594.shtml

6. Using an analogy, a doctor said his patient had "passed over to the other side" because he found no sign of breathing when he put his hand over the patient's nose. However, shortly after his comments, the patient began to move.

When asked, the patient replied that Satan told him his adviser had forgotten to reserve a "special place in hell" for him. Hence it was still "no over" for him, and he was allowed to "walk back to this side".

From the two words "no over", I coin the term "novero" for:

(a) a person who refuses to die or "walks back" from hell.

(b) a person who walks back his wild statement.

 

Joke 8

1. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused for 21 seconds when asked about U.S. President Donald Trump and the use of tear gas against protesters to clear the way for a photo opportunity.

During a televised interview Trudeau, who is usually quick to answer, struggled to come up with the right words when asked about Trump calling for military action against protesters.

He eventually said Tuesday that Canadians need to address issues of racial inequality, but he avoided mentioning Trump directly.....

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ons-render-Trudeau-speechless-21-seconds.html

2. Angelica Elizabeth Zambrano Mora, aged 18 from Ecuador wrote Prepare to Meet Your LORD and in it, she speaks about being dead for 23 hours and finding herself in hell amongst many celebrities that include Michael Jackson the singer and Pope John Paul II.

The lady testifies....that she was taken by Jesus to pay a visit to Hell and Heaven and speaks in regards to the well-known people that she saw in Hell, about the glories of heaven and the rapture and end of times...

After the loss of life of Pope John Paul II she was told that he was now in heaven and he was resting in peace with the angels. Nevertheless, she reported that she had seen him in hell and he was being tormented as he had not repented. Mora stated that she had asked the Lord why he was there and God said that while he used to preach to many individuals, he didn’t speak the reality and he preferred money to preaching about salvation. The Lord stated that the Pope had refused to believe that hell was real and now he found out that it does.

Mora then stated that the Lord had shown her a giant screen that showed the life of Pope John Paul II and God said that there were many idolaters within the place. She went on to say that while she was speaking she noticed an excessive amount of money and the pope had so much of it. God then told her to tell humanity about what she had seen and told them that it was time for them to turn to him....

The Lord then said that many famous and crucial people were coming to hell and one of them was a person that had been known around the globe and that in actual truth he was a Satanist. This man was said to be Michael Jackson. The Lord said that he had made agreements with the Satan in order that he could have fame and followers. The Lord said that the dances that Jackson was known for were the way demons walk when they’re tormenting the folks in hell. Mora insisted that God had shown her Michael Jackson and he was being tormented within the flames. The Lord said that folks shouldn’t play his songs and sing them....

Source: https://wholesecrets.com/watch-vide...pe-john-paul-ii-and-many-other-famous-people/

3. Justin Trudeau might be worried that his "special place in hell" could be upgraded to a "very special" status if he did not take the time to comment wisely or avoid mentioning Donald Trump directly.

If Angelica Elizabeth Zambrano Mora's claim to have found Michael Jackson and Pope John Paul II in hell were true, it shows that Satan, like Trump, has more than one adviser in his team to preserve "special places in hell" for the celebrities. However, unlike Trump, Satan may never treat his staff as Trumpian umbrellas.

 

Joke 9

1. In his 2011 book Death by China, Peter Navarro, the top trade adviser for US President Donald Trump, used a fictional scholar named “Ron Vara”—an anagram of “Navarro”—to add weight to his claim that “Chinese junk” is killing Americans.

Ron Vara, who is clearly hostile toward China, has made appearances in his work for about two decades. “Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel,” Navarro wrote in his 2011 book, citing the fake expert.

The fictional character Ron Vara shows that Navarro is willing to present questionable opinions as expert facts to create fear about China, and to drive a wedge between the China and the United States.....

Source: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/china-...he-real-us-trade-adviser-please-stand-up.html

2. Here, I coin the term "norvara" for each of the following “supermen”:

(a) A person who believes himself existing as the same person in two or more different worlds at the same time.

(b) A person who believes himself existing as two or more different persons in the same world at the same time.

(c) A person who believes himself existing as two or more different persons in two or more different worlds at the same time.

 

Joke 10



Source: https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202006/24/WS5ef2f0dba3108348172552dc.html

1. Peter Navarro doesn’t want you to buy toys that were made in China, because he believes they’ll poison your children. He doesn’t want you to buy pajamas sewn in China, because he thinks they could catch on fire. He doesn’t want you to buy phones that were assembled in China, because he believes they could explode and kill you. In fact, he doesn’t want you to buy anything at all from China, because he thinks every dollar the country receives will be spent on trying to destroy the US.

...Navarro is terrified by China, which he sees as a “heavily armed, totalitarian regime intent on regional hegemony and bent on global domination.” He looks at it through the kind of lens that Washington once considered the Soviet Union.

And he’ll be the first to tell you that the US should be ready to go to war with China at any moment.

Navarro possesses a striking blend of animosity and paranoia about anything have to do with China. In Death by China, which he deems his “survival guide” to outmaneuvering “the planet’s most efficient assassin,” he warns the reader against ever purchasing Chinese products.

“Unscrupulous Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding world markets with a range of bone-crushing, cancer-causing, flammable, poisonous, and otherwise lethal products, foods, and drugs,” he warns.

At one point, Navarro asks the reader to engage in a cautionary thought experiment and — using a military phrase popularized during the Vietnam War — imagine that “your best friend is ‘fragged’ when the [Chinese-made] cell phone in his chest pocket explodes and sends bone shrapnel into his heart.”

Navarro also argues that investing in the Chinese economy is hugely dangerous for the US because China is a totalitarian regime fixated on becoming the world’s sole superpower. He accuses Beijing of using “weapons of job destruction” against the US, such as devaluing its currency in order to make Chinese products cheaper inside the US and make American products more expensive in China. It’s all part of a strategy, he writes, for China “to pick off America’s industries job by job.”

...there’s always some point in Navarro’s analysis where he veers off the path of rational concern and starts to careen through a wilderness of all-consuming fears about China’s true intentions. Aided by cartoonish and frequently offensive stereotypes of the Chinese national character, Navarro tends to believe that there is something fundamentally underhanded and evil about China, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Those aren’t widely-shared views, to put it mildly. Adam Davidson wrote in his profile of Navarro in the New Yorker last year that “Navarro’s views on trade and China are so radical, however, that, even with his assistance, I was unable to find another economist who fully agrees with them.”

...his claim that all Chinese products should be avoided because they’re likely to imperil your safety — or literally kill you — are clearly overstated. The billion-plus iPhones circulating the world that were assembled in China, for example, don’t seem to be posing an existential threat to the human race (accidents from walking and driving while texting not withstanding).

...China can’t be blamed for everything. Autor estimates that China accounts for about 40 percent of the decline in manufacturing between 2000 and 2007. Navarro appears uninterested in engaging with the factors contributing to the other 60 percent of that decline....

US factories now manufacture twice as much as in 1984 — but do it with one-third fewer workers. Robots are to blame for the loss of nearly 750,000 manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, according to a new paper from Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University.

That means that US manufacturing won’t bounce back to its former levels even if Navarro and Trump succeed in bringing some jobs back from China, for one simple reason: Robotics means that American companies simply need far fewer human employees...

Source: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/6/14697762/china-trump-trade-navarro

2. Herein I coin the term "varronaphrenia" to denote an extreme form of paranoid schizophrenia and xenophobia, in particular Sinophobia.

 

Joke 11

1. (CNN)In his 2011 book "Death by China," President Donald Trump's senior adviser Peter Navarro quoted a China hawk named "Ron Vara" to prove his point on the threat posed by Beijing to the American economy.

"Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel," Vara said. He appears once more in the book and is even referenced in the index.

There's just one problem -- Vara doesn't appear to exist, according to an investigation by an Australian academic, who determined that Vara is actually Navarro. Ron Vara is even an anagram of Navarro's last name....

According to the 2001 book, Vara was a captain in a reserve unit during the Gulf War as well as a doctoral student in economics at Harvard University in the US.

When Morris-Suzuki called Harvard, they said they didn't have any record of any alumni with that name....

Vara is quoted in at least six of Navarro's books, including in "The Coming China Wars" from 2008.

"You've got to be nuts to eat Chinese food," Vara is quoted as saying.

Morris-Suzuki said that she found Navarro's attitude to his misquoting of analysts "concerning."

"They were popular books, they were certainly supposed to be facts and in a sense he's staked his reputation as a China expert on these books, so quoting from a made-up person in those seems like a strange thing to do," she said.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics/peter-navarro-ron-vara-trump-china-intl-hnk/index.html

2. Herein I coin the term "varrona" to denote a self-proclaimed expert who, in complete disregard for the importance of scholarly integrity, shamelessly fakes a source to present it as factual in his non-fiction books to help him demonize a country with over-exaggerated and apocalyptic narratives.

3. In “The Coming China Wars,” a section about China’s “poisoned food chain” warned about toxic Chinese fish being exported to the United States. A quote from Ron Vara drove the point home: “You’ve got to be nuts to eat Chinese food.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/peter-navarro-ron-vara.html

4. I also coin the term "varappetitphobia" for the phobia displayed by Navarro's alter ego about Chinese food.

 

Joke 12

1. Navarro has quoted Vara a dozen or so times in six books, usually as an epigraph before a chapter. In Death by China, published in 2011, Vara offers this sweeping assessment of the country's roughly 1.4 billion people: "Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel."

Those who know Navarro well, Autry says, were fully aware that Ron Vara was a phony source who often popped up in his books. He said Vara was Navarro's "alter ego," an "everyman character" who dispenses cutesy business aphorisms as well as dire warnings about Chinese food.

Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/16/trumps-china-muse-adviso.html

2. Herein I coin the term "vara" or "go vara" to describe a person who fears or hates someone or something to such an irrational extent that he develops full-blown psychosis.

For example:

(a) Ron Vara was so vara over Chinese goods that he saw a Chinese leather sofa turning into an acid bath before his very eyes.

(b) Ron Vara goes vara over China to such an extent that he wakes up every night from a nightmare of being killed by flying shrapnel from a Chinese cellphone battery.

(c) Uncle Sam is so vara over China that he sees a spy in every Chinese.