I dunno. China is a "market socialist" system -- which is a contradiction in terms. If China is socialist, then for practical purposes Norway and Sweden have to be even *more* socialist because they have a comprehensive public welfare system which China lacks. And those Nordic countries are rated quite high on global measures of political and personal freedom, and very low on corruption. In general they outperform the US on most of those measures, although the US is better on measures of business deregulation.

It makes no sense to claim Chinese courts have a lot of power, although it may seem that way â" itâ(TM)s supposed to seem that way. One of the foundational principles of Chinese jurisprudence is party supremacy. Every judge is supervised by a PLC â" party legal committee â" which oversees budgets, discipline and assignments in the judiciary. They consult with the judges in sensitive trials to ensure a politically acceptable outcome.

So it would be more accurate to characterize the courts as an instrument of party power rather than an independent power center.

From time to time Chinese court decisions become politically inconvenient, either through the supervisors in the PLC missing something or through changing circumstances. In those cases there is no formal process for the party to make the courts revisit the decision. Instead the normal procedure is for the inconvenient decision to quietly disappear from the legal databases, as if it never happened. When there is party supremacy, the party can simply rewrite judicial history to its current needs.

An independent judiciary seems like such a minor point; and frankly it is often an impediment to common sense. But without an independent judiciary you canâ(TM)t have rule of law, just rule by law.

My wife recently bought a new laptop and, to both of our surprise, it was configured out of the box to save data to OneDrive instead of C:. She's not particularly tech savvy and one day Chrome complained that storage was full. She did a web search of the error and it recommended deleting data from OneDrive, which she did, assuming that her family pictures were only backed up there - not primarily stored there - and ended up losing important data as a result of this.

Thankfully it must have been that particular OEM that chose to do this. I had installed "vanilla" Windows 11 on a custom PC build and that didn't happen - and we just bought a new laptop for our new business, different brand, and that was the first setting I checked (not an issue).

Still... companies pushing this type of crap on users is just batshit. Offer as an option, sure. But fundamentally re-configuring core functionality that people who have been using the OS for decades take for granted is just madness.

Hereâ(TM)s the problem with that scenario: court rulings donâ(TM)t mean much in a state ruled by one party. China has plenty of progressive looking laws that donâ(TM)t get enforced if it is inconvenient to the party. There are emission standards for trucks and cars that should help with their pollution problems, but there are no enforcement mechanisms and officials have no interest in creating any if it would interfere with their economic targets or their private interests.

China is a country of strict rules and lax enforcement, which suits authoritarian rulers very well. It means laws are flouted routinely by virtually everyone, which gives the party leverage. Displease the party, and they have plenty of material to punish you, under color of enforcing laws. It sounds so benign, at least theyâ(TM)re enforcing the law part of the time, right? Wrong. Laws selectively enforced donâ(TM)t serve any public purpose; theyâ(TM)re just instruments of personal power.

Americans often donâ(TM)t seem to understand the difference between rule of law and rule *by* law. Itâ(TM)s ironic because the American Revolution and constitution were historically important in establishing the practicality of rule of law, in which political leaders were not only expected to obey the laws themselves, but had a duty to enforce the law impartially regardless of their personal opinions or interests.

Rule *by* law isnâ(TM)t a Chinese innovation, it was the operating principle for every government before 1789. A government that rules *by* law is only as good as the men wielding power, and since power corrupts, itâ(TM)s never very good for long.

I think anyone saying that the shooter clearly belongs to one party or the other at this point is lying. And I've seen plenty of it on both sides, including you, right now.

If you can't see the shooter is FAR LEFT...then you are either willingly blind or not listening at all.

His notes, his relatives telling his history, FFS he's fucking a gay furry guy trans.....

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck....

That is a good post except for one thing. Charlie Kirk's killer isn't "left"

I guess you haven't been watching the news for the days AFTER the shooting.....this guy might have been raised "right", but he left that awhile back, was shacking up with a furry, trans guy....and both had pushed back on their families showing extreme hate for anything remotely conservative....hell the dude wrote shit in his notes, his texts and even on his bullet casings....

The left tried pushing the shooter was maga right off to bat, but that has long since been disproved.

It's gotten so far that some Republicans are trying to back away because they realize that those laws being used to censor "the left" could easily be used to censor them for the exact same reason. The big fun being to see how the Supreme Court will allow the censorship but then twist themselves into knots trying to deny the same rights if a (D) gets to be President.

The LEFT was ALREADY doing this....especially during the Obama and Biden admins....Obama using direct federal power/branches directory, like the IRS.

Biden, with DOJ going after people they didn't like and directly pressuring Social Media to deplatform people and cut banking abilities... Look I don't agree with recent Reps suggesting HARD to have people lose jobs/censored, but it is different than direct federal manipulations with actual branches actively doing things, behind the scenes, etc....those backdoor communications with Twitter and FAcebook are far different than someone on the FCC saying bad things about Kimmel....but they didn't force ABC to can him....

Never mind the other deaths like January 6

Jan 6ths...really?

Let's see....1 person was killed that day at the Capitol...the lady trying to climb in a window show and killed by a guard.

That's your example??

No...something in people, beliefs or lack thereof have been the problem.

We've had guns freely available in the US for a LONG time.

Remember it's only been since the mid 80s since we had background checks....since I believe 1986 that would could'n't buy a modern NEW full auto machine gun.

Hell, I remember in the 70's, you didn't have to go to a "Gun store" to buy a gun, they sold rifles at places like Western Auto, and your local hardware store.

It wasn't long ago you could order a gun via a catalog and have it mailed to your front door without any kind of background check.

And we didn't have the "mass" shootings like you see today....

There were a few, yes, but FEW and far between...no one was shooting up schools all the time or the like.

We have more gun control today than ever...and the problem seems to be getting worse.

It isn't the guns....it's broken people. What's the coincidence?

More broken and single parent homes. Raising generations to not properly value the human life....

Let's try to figure out what changed in PEOPLE since the 80's and earlier....

A couple hours before my post here Kimmel just got drummed off the air for saying roughly this

No, Kimmel got drummed off the air for lying on air saying that the shooter was a conservative MAGA supporter..."one of their own", long after official statements and evidence have plainly stated the opposite.

He was trying to still promote the leftists lies that came out early on this to confuse the public.

addressing the actual problem of lax gun control.

You know...I have a fuck ton of guns.

And not ONCE have they spontaneously jumped up, aimed and fired themselves at me or anyone or anything around me.....not at home, or in the car or when carrying when out and about.

Guns are nothing but tools with no intrinsic evil or danger.

It's the fucking loons out there getting amped up to take out "evil" people on "the other side"....

Same people that would run a car through a crowd...mass knifing....home made explosives...etc.

Why do you insist on blaming the tool when it is people that are the fucking problem.

Eliminate one tool...and people will...Uh....Find a way.

I'm trying to figure out why the fuck anyone would want to buy this thing in the first place?

If you want something with the power of a phone....buy a fucking phone....no?

So...just how long have you been on the Chinese Comunists payroll?

;)

I dunno....the US used to be a nicer, better place to live a few decades back when we had a bit LESS diversity....like when most people spoke (or tried to ) the same national language, we had a more melting pot mentality...where if you came here you wanted to be an American, and not still a citizen of the foreign place you came from....where you'd come here to wave the American flag, not the one of the fucking country you left for some reason....etc.

When you have 7-8 million people living in a place where 95 percent can't afford to live near their job that doesn't pay very much, you expect EVERYONE to be friendly? The area in and around "the city" has a lot of friendly people who are getting knocked down continually, but once you get beyond the caution that everyone needs to have in a city, people really are friendly. The key is that there are a lot of people who would steal from others because they don't make enough money from their job to live without working one or two OTHER jobs as well. Those who are paid decently are friendly, but with all of the con artists(there's a reason for the dislike of Trump by those who live in New York), people still need to be very cautious with anyone they don't already know.

You'd think most sane people living in a place that sounds horrible the way you describe it...would fucking MOVE to somewhere else in the US, where jobs are more plentiful, cost of living is down, you have better government, people ARE friendly and life is good.

The US is a large country, with many great places to live....plenty of climate, culture and peoples out there to explore and find a happy place to live your life.