Finally, the 2008 Beijing Olympics is over! I didn’t get to see a lot of it, but what I saw was pretty interesting to say the least. The only problem was an hour after I was done watching, I was hungry.

Yet, in spite of all the wonderful sights and sounds coming from Beijing, I can’t say as I’m particularly happy that China was even allowed to host the Summer Olympics in the first place. Seems they have a little problem with people speaking out over there, which I’m sure the Left in this country simply cannot abide. In fact, I just know that they’ll get around to protesting China’s disdain for freedom after they get done with their protest march and rally about how George W. Bush is silencing dissent.

In truth, most Americans don’t know that much about China, but we need to get up to speed fast if we’re going to keep up with them in the near future. Let’s review a few things.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CHINA

The bulk of what most Americans know about China can be summarized by one word and three letters: No MSG.

You may think I’m joking (and I am to an extent), but the fact remains that we’re not as up on the Chinese as we should be. Unless, of course, you like having tainted cat food, lead-based paint on toys, and Kung Bao Chicken that’s a little too spicy and gives you painful indigestion for three days after you eat it.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT CHINA

There’s a lot we don’t know or that we didn’t care to pick up on when it happened, so here are some of the highlights.

- China is one of the largest countries in the world, both in land mass and in population.

-  With the transfer of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese in 1997, China is an economic superpower just starting to flex its muscles.

- China still retains much of the totalitarianism it had when communism was still around in the world outside of U. C. Berkeley.

- China’s oil consumption has jumped up within the past five years, rivaling that of the United States.

- China has a “hybrid” economy, mixing a form of capitalism with totalitarianism. (Until they start selling ad space on the Great Wall of China, they’re not capitalists in my book.)

- China has become a major trading partner with the US, trading in everything from children’s toys to electronics.

- They hate our guts.

This last one isn’t a joke, folks. The Chinese consider us in the same way we consider O. J. Simpson. Or even Jessica Simpson for that matter. Thanks to an idiot President who will remain nameless, but was known for having a proclivity for being caught with his pants down, China is considered a “strategic partner” to us. And that same President proved it by giving away military technology to these folks. Wasn’t that nice of him?

Put simply, when it comes to China, we’re more clueless than a game of Password with paraplegic street mimes.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

The first thing we need to do is get our heads around China. The way we do that is to take an honest look at their recent history and figure out if we really want to do business with them. Let’s see…Tiananmen Square, electronic piracy, shooting down an American spy plane, blocking our efforts in Iraq through the United Nations, stealing nuclear and military secrets during the 90s, trying to poison our children and pets with tainted products, and cheating at the Olympics. Yeah, let’s just have these kids over for a barbeque and let them have a few billion of our dollars while we’re at it.

Really, what we should be doing is cutting off all ties to China because they’ve done little else but become a stumbling block to our country. It’s like the old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 37 times, shame on me for reelecting you to Congress.” Sure, we might have to pay a little more for some things in the short run, but I think we can get by without a cheaply made DVD player from China in lieu of a cheaply made DVD player from Japan. After the fiasco that was our crappy remake of “Godzilla” I think it’s the least we can do.

Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. and NewsBull.com. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.