Draw Every Day January 28, 2012: The Astronaut and the iPod

I love my bag of astronauts! For this drawing, I pulled one out of the bag with a flag and put it on my desk in front of my iPod Nano.  Ironic, since, they share the same country of origin.  Funny how the American flag the astronaut holds is all torn up (it does have 13 stripes, however--I counted!).

China starts the Second Space Race without US

Found this via UnknownSkywalker:



According to an article at physorg.com, China is beginning work on a space station starting with this first module.  Now, this doesn't mean China will be conquering space before Christmas.  This first module is just for practice. The real station goes up in 3 parts starting in 2020.

Yeah, it seems like a pretty unimpressive start to the Second Space Race, but hey, the First Space Race started with the Russians tossing a 2-foot-diameter mirror ball into orbit in 1958. Consider that the first serious attempt at a space station, Skylab, wasn't until the 70s and Mir didn't go up until the 80s.  So, 8 years to launch the first third of a space station is actually pretty damn fast.

Of course, Americans won't have anything in space in 8 years because we put our economy in front of the advancement of human kind and, apparently, the spread of communism into space.

I swear, if, in 2030, we've got Space Commies to deal with, I'm blaming Obama!!

666cast episode 46 from website666.com!

In this week’s episode, my old buddy Stew takes a walk with me in Manhattan as we discuss how China bought the company he works for and other signs of American economic doom.

666cast episode 44 from website666.com: This week hear how America is falling behind in the “setting a good example game”! Protests for democracy erupt all over the world and America has shit to do with it!

666cast episode 44 from website666.com: This week hear how America is falling behind in the “setting a good example game”! Protests for democracy erupt all over the world and America has shit to do with it!

motherjones:

Chinese woman sentenced to a year in a labor camp for a tweet (via Gawker)

I’ve been complaining a lot about the US police state, as mild as it is, but seeing this in my Tumblr stream reminds me of just how mild our police state is in the US.

Apparently, Cheng Jianping, RTed her fiance’s tweet about really sticking it to Japan by destroying the Japanese Expo pavilion in Shanghai—she apparently added a comment that jokingly encouraged China’s youth to go do exactly that.  Of course, any moron could see that she was kidding, but the commie bastards that run China’s government stuck her in a labor camp for “disturbing social order.”  Ah yeah, by joking.

The only place we can’t joke, here in the US, is during a TSA security check.

Read more about it on Gizmodo.  Not sure why they were blogging about this story, but then Gizmodo does waste a LOT of time with posts having jack to do with gadgets.  Sounds like SOMEbody needs to spend some time in a Chinese labor camp! ;)

Obama finally makes the change and begins telling China a bit of what's what.

Another important post from underpaidgenius:

“Our trade relationship has to be fair. You can’t just sell to us and we can’t sell to you. […] And so we have been bringing more actions against China before the World Trade Organization. We are going to enforce our trade laws much more effectively than we have in the past. […] I’m pro-trade. I just want to make sure that it is fair for American businesses and for American workers.”

—

Obama — and the US — starts erecting trade barriers to protect US business, and slow the trade imbalance with China.

Let’s not quibble about whether these are new barriers or just old ones finally being enforced: the shift in policy is clear.

via Reuters

The shift in policy is definitely clear, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough.  Forget protecting US businesses—we need the US workers to be protected.  Outsourcing needs to be banned (if a job *can* be done here, it MUST be) and international corporations should have a minimum number of employees inside the US before they should be allowed to have overseas offices/facilities if they make above a certain amount of money.

Damn right, it’s protectionist! Compared to not protecting the American worker at all, I think a little protectionism is just what our economy ordered!  And don’t tell me this won’t create jobs.

It’s not enough that China buy our stuff—it’s that we have stuff to sell, which we really don’t.