"Raise the white flag!"

I was perusing the intertubes one day and ran across a couple of unrelated stories. Unrelated of course, until I let my twisted little mind go at them for a while and make a connection. Thought I would share it with you.

“Tom Rukavina, a longtime Democratic state legislator from northern Minnesota with a Buy-American philosophy, sponsored a bill enacted into law last year that requires flags sold in the Gopher State to be made domestically.”I guess I believe if anything should be made in this country, it's our flag," he said. His father was a U.S. soldier in Europe during World War II and his uncle was a Marine on Iwo Jima when the flag was raised over Mount Suribachi. “

At first I figured that this must mean that Mr. Rukavina has solved all of Minnesota’s problems and was moving on. You know no hunger, no homeless people there. Everyone has affordable health care. Best school system in the country. Banks are solvent. There are plenty of police and firefighters to protect the citizenry. Figured it was late on a Friday, thought he might make a law.

Then the article continued.

"People say it's a question of constitutionality," Mr. Rukavina said about some protests over his foreign-flag restriction. "You know what? I don't give a damn. It wasn't a patriotic thing so to speak. But it is one thing that I care about."

The ONE THING HE CARED ABOUT! Sorry homeless hungry people. Sorry sick people without healthcare. Sorry teachers and students and parents. Sorry police and firefighters. Mr. Rukavina doesn’t care about you. He is much too busy attacking our rights to free speech and commerce. You know, that stupid little thing we call the US CONSTITUTION and the BILL OF RIGHTS. Well at least this was being limited to a small part of the country, waaaaay up near the Canadian border. Or not…

Further in the article, it continued to assail me. “Trade laws require products sold in the United States to state the country of origin, she said. Some states have taken action. Minnesota enacted a law in 2007 requiring that any U.S. flags sold in the state be made in America. New Jersey is considering a law requiring that flags bought with state funds be domestically made. One of the bigger buyers of Stars and Stripes is the U.S. government, which has laws requiring that flags used by federal agencies and departments be made in the United States.”

Ok, so as Arlo Guthrie has said, if one person does something they may think he's really sick.And if three people do it, they may think it's an organization. And can you imagine fifty people doing something; they may think it's a movement. It is the “OUR FLAGS MUST BE MADE IN THE UNITED STATES!” movement. Plus, we can import Chinese toys with lead paint and Chinese chocolate made with tainted milk, but no flags dammit. That crosses the line.

Give me a break.

This logic was making me nuts so I continued to surf the interweb and imagine my shock when I saw this from Bloomberg, the financial news service. It was reporting “Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest independent U.S. securities firm, may sell a larger stake to China Investment Corp. and is in talks about a possible merger with Wachovia Corp., a person familiar with the matter said. China's state-controlled fund may buy as much as 49 percent of the New York-based investment bank, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks aren't public and may end in no agreement. Morgan Stanley resumed its decline on the New York Stock Exchange, falling as much as 22 percent.”

So let me get this all straight. Several state legislatures and the federal government worry about us buying US flags made in China, while we bring in billions of dollars in tainted product and China is planning to buy 49% of Morgan Stanley.

We get our flags made in the good ol’ US of A, we get toys and chocolate we have to throw away, and they get our home mortgages, IRA’a and retirement accounts.

Expect to get evicted people, we deserve it…