Michigan residents watching the Super Bowl last night may have noticed an unusual political ad that aired during Sunday’s game. In it, a young Chinese woman is seen riding a bike through what appears to be a rice paddy. She stops to tell the viewer all about Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow‘s spending, as young Chinese women riding bikes through rice paddies are wont to do. As a result of spending, she informs us, the U.S. has to borrow more money from China and “your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie Spenditnow!”

The United Nations Security Council held a vote on a resolution to formally condemn Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for his crackdowns against the protests being organized by opposition groups. 13 of the 15 nations on the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, but both China and Russia vetoed and effectively killed it. Already both nations have faced strong condemnations from Syrian opposition forces and several ambassadors to the United Nations.

A viral video featuring six Chinese soldiers playing “pass the grenade” is burning up the YouTubes, mainly because the grenade they’re passing around is, according to the video’s title, a live one. The soldiers pass some kind of smoking object around, then toss it into a pit, and hit the deck as something explodes. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but their routine is a near-perfect metaphor for the 2012 presidential election.

America has only experienced the first of many primary contests this week, and already a candidate for “most offensive campaign ad” has come to the fore, and with gusto. The group “New Hampshire Liberty 4 Paul”– supporting Rep. Ron Paul– has come out swinging against Jon Huntsman for his ties to China, asking whether he is the “Manchurian Candidate” and whether he lacks “American values” for having lived in Beijing.

Reality television in America is often taken for granted and derided as corrosive to the fabric of society. In China, however, it appears that the emergence of reality television in the form of dating shows has only prompted the same response from the communist government, as the single most popular show on Chinese television, “If You Were The One,” breaks down cultural mores and exposes a side of the nation’s youth that yearns to speak freely about sex, money, fame, and family.

Christian Bale found himself on the run from Chinese authorities after he attempted to meet with Chen Guangcheng with help from CNN’s international news team.

Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly had a bit of a friendly scuffle tonight during a discussion about Trump’s policies and potential upcoming presidential debate. Trump took umbrage at O’Reilly claiming that Trump had wanted to be on the program and not that he was doing O’Reilly a favor and brought it up in the middle of an answer on China and OPEC. That prompted O’Reilly to question his thick skin, or lack thereof. “Are you the most sensitive guy in the world?” O’Reilly asked rhetorically, suggesting that Trump wanted to “kick butt everywhere” but wasn’t comfortable receiving attacks.

One of the subplots to last week’s Herman Cain Bad-Press-A-Palooza (bad press that seems to have helped him) was his supposed gaffe in an interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff on Monday night’s Newshour. The clip has widely been reported as demonstrating that Cain did not know that China has had nuclear weapons since 1964, and that he thinks they still don’t. For a week now, I’ve been waiting for someone to point out that Cain indicated no such thing.

This afternoon, Martin Bashir invited MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews onto is program to discuss both the personal and policy-related issues surrounding GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain‘s campaign. Where policy is concerned, asked Bashir, “is Herman Cain a serious candidate for president?” Matthews’ response was simple, and blunt.

An incredulous Joe Scarborough railed on Herman Cain this morning for the GOP frontrunner’s apparent ignorance of China’s national capability. Scarborough declared that Cain’s alarming foreign policy gaffe was evidence that he was “woefully ill-prepared to be commander-in-chief,” adding that had Sarah Palin, she would have been vilified.

The post-sexual harassment Herman Cain media blitz that has kept up all week has done a great deal to understand the workings of the Cain campaign in crisis, but there is one other element of Cain’s platform that seems to be getting hit the hardest by his exposure to the press: his foreign policy credentials. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, Cain essentially said he was ready to declare war on Iran; last night on PBS’s Newshour, he told Judy Woodruff he suspected China was “trying to develop nuclear capability,” despite having nuclear weapons since 1964.

CNN’s Erin Burnett sat down with GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain on her show, where the two engaged in the requisite discussion on Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and, of course, whether he is “the flavor of the month” or here to stay. He insists, of course, on the latter. “I am for real,” he told Burnett. “This is Herman Cain. They will know that I am in this to win it. I am not in this to try and raise my profile or get a TV show.”

The image of President Barack Obama as Colonel Sanders advertising a fried chicken restaurant would immediately be flagged as unacceptably racist, but that seems to be exactly what has popped up in Beijing. The Daily Mail reports that “Obama Fried Chicken,” complete with the President in suspenders and bow tie and the slogan, “We’re so cool, aren’t we?”

At this point, it doesn’t look like American Idol will ever die. Even if we come to a point where Fox needs to develop cloning techniques just so there will still be new, innoffensive singers to compete, as long as people keep watching, then Randy Jackson will continue telling those clones that they are, in fact, da bomb, dawg. That’s just the way capitalism works. Success and money means immortality. However, over in Red China, they have a different system and their American Idol counterpart has just been canceled despite once garnering 400 million viewers. The reason? The audience voting style is to “western.”

On the campaign trail yesterday, Mitt Romney responded to Vice President Joe Biden‘s controversial comment on China’s one-child policy. Biden said during his visit that he “fully understand[s] the policy” and wasn’t “second-guessing it.” Since then Biden’s office has insisted he finds the practice “repugnant.”

New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith (R) was a guest on Laura Ingraham‘s radio show today to discuss comments Vice President Joe Biden recently made regarding China’s one-child policy. Biden is currently on a “charm mission” throughout Asia which, fortunately for the internet, included a visit with a Mongolian wrestler.

During a speech Sunday at Chengdu’s Sichuan University, Biden told those gathered that “your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family,” before going on to list benefits of implementing such a system. Well, count Smith among the many who are disturbed by Biden’s statements.

In America, Vice President Joe Biden has developed a fairly large following beyond his politics for being somewhat fast and loose with his words, a trait that did not go unnoticed in the 2008 election. These days, the Vice President is on what Reuters is calling a “charm mission,” which so far seems to have involved him making several Vintage Biden jokes that have been met with blank stares.

Add Donald Trump to the list of people that seem to have doubts about President Obama’s national tour. Speaking from his office with Greta van Susteren today, Trump argued that the President takes “more vacations than any human being I’ve ever seen” and that his “fundraising tour” should not fall into the hands of taxpayers, citing a lack of leadership on his part.

A day after the Republican presidential candidates gathered in Iowa for what was unquestionably the most combative debate of the campaign season, Rachel Maddow examined particular claims made by the candidates to determine if they were true or false.

A good news economic story out of Georgia today as it turns out people in China are eating with chopsticks that are made in America. Donald Trump, a persistent critic of China and their economic policies, should take note as China is apparently eager to boost America’s exports as they load up on these American-made chopsticks.

Donald Trump, the former frontrunner in the 2012 Republican race until The Apprentice seduced him away, is still happy to chat about politics and give his perspective, and still pushing most of the views that brought him to prominence early in the year. But tonight, while still going strong against President Obama’s foreign policy, Trump had praise for the way the President handled at least some of his business: by doing it on the golf course.

With the debate on raising the national debt ceiling fast becoming the most important debate currently on the House floor, candidates to become members of said House may be feeling the pressure to run on a platform that highlights their refusal to allow the debt to grow any further. But highlighting a take on policy and plain fearmongering are two different things, and it’s pretty clear in what category Nevada Republican House candidate Mark Amodei‘s “Chinese nightmare” ad falls.

Be careful if you pick up a Chinese-grown watermelon this summer. The BBC reports farmers in eastern China have a bizarre problem: their watermelons keep exploding. “Farmer Liu Mingsuo told the Xinhua news agency that more than two-thirds of his crop had blown up,” explains the BBC.

Watermelons (at least those that have not been filled with explosives by local fire departments in an effort to dramatize the dangers of fireworks) do not tend to explode. But in China, state-run media’s reporting acres and acres of melon meeting their fate in sudden detonations. “Growth chemicals” have become prime suspects in the strange situation, except for the fact that melons untreated by chemicals are also, basically, blowing up:

World Press Freedom Day is May 3rd, a time when editorial writers will rightly mourn the decline of freedom of expression and the alarming rise in the number of journalists and bloggers killed or incarcerated around the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 79 journalists
were killed in 2010 and hundreds of professional and citizen journalists remain behind bars. These are undeniable tragedies, most especially for the journalists and the families of those who were killed, tortured or jailed for trying to report the news, a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But the much-cited freedom of expression indices are misleading.

Mike Huckabee, the other possible GOP presidential candidate running in second place in the polls, visited Fox & Friends to talk about his new rival, Donald Trump, and it turns out Huckabee fully supports his presidential bid. Confirming that, yes, “he’s going to do it,” Huckabee argued that, while the birth certificate debate “was working for the Donald,” he didn’t intend to open that can of worms himself anytime soon.