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Zalatix

Zalatix's Journal
Zalatix's Journal
September 17, 2012

"Stop the Democrat takeover of Congress"... Cravaak for Congress ad on the DU?

So the Republicans are scared that the Dems will take over Congress? Well that's easy to stop....


er, nope, it ain't.

Even if the GOP stops their war on women, minorities and the working class, they're done'fer!

September 17, 2012

China is suing the US for the right to dump their excess crap in the US market.

Guess where Congress and Obama stand on that?

http://news.yahoo.com/china-files-trade-case-against-washington-111202296.html

BEIJING (AP) — China filed a World Trade Organization case Monday challenging U.S. anti-dumping measures on billions of dollars of kitchen appliances, paper and other goods, adding to worsening trade strains as global demand weakens.

Beijing's move came shortly before the Obama administration filed its own WTO case accusing China of improperly subsidizing exports of automobiles and auto parts.

China and the U.S. have clashed over complaints about market barriers and subsidies for goods including autos, solar panels, tires, steel and chicken. Political pressures on both sides are worsening as demand for their goods cools, raising the threat of job losses in export industries.

As campaigning for the U.S. presidency intensifies ahead of a November vote, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney have traded barbs on China, accusing each other of backing policies that would move American jobs overseas.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said its latest WTO complaint centers on the U.S. Congress's passage of a law this year that retroactively gave the Commerce Department power to impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods. That came after a U.S. court reversed earlier duties imposed under rules covering countries such as China and Vietnam that are deemed to be "non-market economies."

September 17, 2012

President Obama about to hit China again over their mercantilist trade policies.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-hit-china-trade-case-over-cars-parts-035854382--election.html

Obama to hit China with trade case over cars, parts

President Barack Obama launches a campaign swing through the pivotal battleground of Ohio on Monday — armed with a new trade enforcement case against China over allegedly improper subsidies to its auto and auto-parts sectors.

Mitt Romney has recently escalated his attacks on the incumbent as not doing enough to protect America's battered manufacturing sector from unfair competition from Beijing. The message has special resonance in states like Ohio, where the auto-parts sector accounts for a sizeable chunk of the economy. (The White House says the industry directly employs 54,200 Ohioans and supports some 850,000 total jobs).

Obama decided to go after China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) because its subsidies are giving its auto parts a leg up -- even in the U.S. market -- over their American counterparts, the administration says.

The Obama Administration is also escalating another trade enforcement action, begun in July, against what it says are unfair anti-dumping and countervailing duties on some $3.3 billion in U.S. automobile exports to China...
September 17, 2012

The Middle East riots were planned in advance. Imagine that, it had nothing to do with a stupid film

All this yapping about restricting freedom of speech in America and how America should surrender its rights to the demands of the world, blah blah blah, all that screaming about punishing the film maker for producing this movie...

And it turns out the movie had nothing to do with the riots at all.


So not only will "Innocence of Muslims" NOT be punished, not only will the First Amendment bashing activists NOT EVER GET WHAT THEY WANT, but now the anti-First Amendment crowd has egg on their face because the riots were going to happen anyway.

How embarrassing!

http://www.news.com.au/world/us-identifies-anti-muslim-filmmaker/story-fndir2ev-1226473817626

THE deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi was planned and "meticulously executed," the country's assembly chief said.

"I don't want to talk about what happened in other countries but as for Libya, the operation was meticulously executed," Mohammed al-Megaryef said of the wave of protests across the world over a US-produced film mocking Islam.

"There was planning. It was not a peaceful protest which degenerated into an armed attack or aggression. That's how it was planned," he said.

US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Tuesday when suspected Islamic militants fired on the consulate in the eastern Libyan city with rocket-propelled grenades and set it ablaze.

"The attack itself and the manner in which the attack occurred ...confirms that this was planned and programmed to achieve a purpose," Mr Megaryef said.

September 17, 2012

It's never not timely for a radical leftist to say this. Over and over again.

For the sake of saving America from the Plutocracy and environmental ruin, I want much bigger changes, many of which I've outlined in specific detail, than President Obama is willing? able? to deliver.

A short list:

A total ban on campaign contributions.
The immediate and total demilitarization and reorganization of all law enforcement agencies, both Federal and Statewide, to weed out control freaks, psychopaths, and serial abusers, and a rigid new set of laws restricting violence by the police.
The replacement of coal-fired power plants with solar power and infra-solar power (such as the night-time solar power plant running in Spain)
The immediate seizing of all abandoned or bank-owned properties for use as either housing for the working class, the poor, or for neighborhood farms. Abandoned commercial properties to be immediately taken for repurposing into vertical farm projects.
A rapid switch to electric powered cars.
A revitalization of the space program with emphasis on colonization research.

I know that's not going to happen even if we gave Obama 16 years. At the very least we've got the Republicans to obstruct him; and anyone with sense knows that there are Plutocrats standing over him threatening to gut the economy, tank the dollar, cause an oil supply crisis, or spark a world war if he does what he wants to do.

But let's just assume the worst. Assume that President Obama is simply a centrist who doesn't really want big changes by anyone's stretch of the imagination. It's silly to assume that Obama didn't want the Public Option but we'll give the naysayers that. Let's just go nuts for a second and assume that Obama supports those drone strikes and all the civilian casualties that have ensued.

Let's just assume all the things that the most radical leftists have said about Obama, up to the craziest (*cough* Nader-ites *cough*) statement of all: "the two parties are pretty much the same".

I will still vote for Obama. I'm still taking occasional time to GOTV, and will be doing it more often now.

Why?

1) It seems the makeup of the US Supreme Court is always at stake nowadays, with each successive 4-year term there's talk of someone retiring. Obama doesn't appoint corporate Statist judges to the bench.

You can just stop this whole thread right here and call that a decapitating blow to any argument in favor of staying home in November, much less voting Republican. But if that's not enough then let's go on to the other guillotine-level point:

2) If Obama loses, we get Mitt Romney in office. A man who clearly represents the threat of more wars, including potentially a nuclear confrontation with Russia. He is unstable, stupid and would be downright disastrous as a world leader.

3) Obama demonstrably stands more with the 99% than the 1%. He wouldn't have hit China with tariffs over their manipulation of the solar panel market and then whupped their ass multiple times in WTO disputes if he didn't give a shit about the 99%. He wouldn't be slamming Mitt Romney about outsourcing jobs out of the country if he didn't care. He wouldn't have started that whole health care reform crusade, if he didn't give a shit. The mandatory insurance blunder? That got forced upon him and all of us. I argue that he would have made the Public Option a reality if it weren't for the GOP. President Obama also pushed for laws punishing companies that outsource American jobs in 2010: another fight for the 99%.

Now I can go on for days about examples where Obama fought for the 99%, but it all boils down to this: I'm a radical leftist with radical ideas and I'm tired of seeing so little progress when so much is needed to save this country, but why in hell would I turn around and set America BACK by staying home in Election Day? How the fuck does that further my goals? How do I satisfy my agenda by taking steps backward and risking a Romney victory? Why would I abandon an incompetent shepherd to get mauled by the wolves? That does me no good. With him gone we're all wide open to the wolves.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. There's a multitude of wise sayings that should just be common sense here. But everyone here knows there are some folks out there who feel Obama is just too much of a disappointment for the Left to stand with him. I'm one radical leftist who ain't one of those.


The point here? Anyone left who is listening to people like Ralph "Cowering Democrats face defeat" Nader... WAKE UP!!! Anyone left who listens to the "Democrats are no different than Republicans" nonsense... WAKE UP!!! They are different!!! And I hope that after November of 2012 all discussions as to how bad things could be under Romney remain purely academic. You don't want to know for sure how bad things could be. One way to avoid that is to GET OUT AND VOTE for Obama AND Congressional Democratic Candidates on Election Day.

And if by some miracle there isn't a single left-of-center American citizen who remains unwilling or reluctant to vote and get out the vote for Obama, and this thread is totally unnecessary... then my day is made and we are guaranteed a world without Romney as President.

September 17, 2012

What if 80,000 people unjustly deprived of the right to vote in Texas, rushed the ballot box anyway?

Is there enough space left in Texas's jails to hold them? If they all demand a speedy, jury trial, are there enough judges to handle that?

What would it take to completely overwhelm the system with civil disobedience such that there's just not enough police thugs and judge-thugs available to lock them all up?

September 15, 2012

So it's okay to insult religious beliefs in America, but if you insult religions based overseas then

some DUers think that you should be sent there to face a crowd of rioting madmen. Or you should be sued. Or you should be busted for inciting a riot.

Gotcha.

September 14, 2012

House votes to end energy loan guarantee program - all based on bullshit propaganda.

http://news.yahoo.com/house-votes-end-energy-loan-guarantee-program-163537521.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Friday pushed a bill through the House shining a campaign-season light on the most conspicuous failure of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package. The bill would phase out federal loan guarantees like those that went to the now-bankrupt solar power company Solyndra LLC and left taxpayers on the hook for more than $500 million.

The "No More Solyndras Act," which passed on a mainly party-line vote, has no chance of advancing in the Democratic-led Senate and was assailed by House Democrats as an election-year stunt. The vote was 245-161.

Solyndra went under because China started dumping cheap offshore solar panels into the market. It's the same tactic they're using to fuck up Germany's solar industry, too.

The problem was NOT Solydra. It was Chinese product dumping and its infernal policy of mercantilism.

We have free traitors here yapping about the benefits of free trade and Globalism while China is laughing in the whole WORLD'S FACE.
September 13, 2012

France: Yet another nation turns against globalism: 80% see it as a job-killer

The opposition is coming from the Left and the Right.

Apparently, like Americans, the French are tired of seeing the world building walls to keep their workers out of the global job market.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/11/us-france-globalisation-idUSBRE83A18K20120411

Vast majority of French against globalization: poll

(Reuters) - A majority of the French favor protectionist measures and see globalization as bad for jobs, a poll showed, suggesting support for a trend in France's presidential campaign that has pushed President Nicolas Sarkozy to advocate a "Buy European" policy.

The survey by pollster IFOP and due to be published on Thursday in La Croix daily showed that eight out of 10 French people saw globalization as hurting employment, while nearly seven in 10 said it helped to increase public deficits.

Of the 1,052 people questioned by IFOP between April 6 and 10, only 22 percent saw globalization as a "good thing" for their country, while seven in 10 said France should increase taxes on products imported from emerging countries.

Sixty-two percent said France should restore customs duties at its borders unilaterally if the European Union failed to raise levies on foreign goods.

Hostility for globalization has taken centre-stage in France's election campaign, with far-right chief Marine Le Pen and hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon gathering some 30 percent of vote intentions in the first of two election rounds on April 22.

September 13, 2012

BIG, RADICAL changes instead of stupid "incremental steps". I want to see a FEDERAL BAN on all laws

that forbid or punish public worker strikes. And a ban on hiring scabs to replace striking workers, too. And I'd also nuke the laws against public safety worker strikes. I'd rather have airline mechanics, pilots and ATC workers striking and have airplanes stuck on the ground, than risk having a plane crash because of poor working conditions or underpaid employees, which are the cause of 99% of strikes, period. I trust the workers in the trenches to use good judgement in deploying their final option to let America know when something is wrong.

Yeah, I said it. Laws against strikes, and strike-breaking tactics, are like rocket launchers in the hands of the NRA: they're not meant for ANYTHING but killing the working class. They have no substantial non-lethal use; in fact, they have no non-lethal use at all.

Yeah yeah, I heard it all, public employees work for us taxpayers, blah blah blah. Cheap labor and shitty working conditions are for China. Stalin and Mao busted unions, Plutocrats bust unions, not liberals.

Unions are workers in the trenches, they don't strike just because. They go on strike because things are fucked up and they're trying to fix it. Find another solution to the problem besides punishing workers who have been pushed to their final option to fight for better wages (or, in the case of Chicago) working conditions.

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Member since: Fri Dec 16, 2011, 10:30 PM
Number of posts: 8,994

About Zalatix

I'm a liberal looking to make a difference in politics.
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