Dfens:

This is exactly why I will be voting for Obama over McCain. The real threat to our security is not from terrorists. Sure they might get a nuke and set it off in a US city and that will be tragic, but what they won’t do is come over here and kick our ass or turn us into a 3rd world garbage heap. Right now, the fact is, only we can do that, and we are by living far beyond our means and financing much of it by borrowing from China. If we keep it up, pretty soon we will have one and maybe 2 potential enemies that can do that to us. McCain might be tough when it comes to countries like Iraq, but he’s a patsy for any country that might really give us a problem. He will sell us out to them in a second as he has done all along. There was a time when we were a big country with big enemies. Today we get closer and closer to being nothing every day.

Flanker:

I don’t really agree with the Obama will be better than McCain rap………….but I certainly agree we are buying the rope the newly psuedo capitalist Chinese will hang us with. These guys (the Chinese) DO NOT view war as an extension of foreign policy by other means, but all other ventures, including commerce, as an extension of war by other means. A much more sophisticated outlook, and strategy than ours. Not only are we selling and/or giving our tech advantages to them, we allow them to steal it in violation of any agreements or patent rights, and they are undercutting our American wage earners with their’s, who’ll work for jack squat, or or forced to accept it.

Dfens:

More of what ‘free trade’ is doing for you:

A Chinese factory that has not been inspected by the Food and Drug Administration is the source for the active ingredient of a critical blood-thinning drug whose production was suspended this week after 350 patients reported ill effects from it. At least four people died after being given the drug, heparin. An F.D.A. spokeswoman, Heidi Robello, said Wednesday that the agency was making plans to inspect the Chinese factory as well as a finishing plant in New Jersey ‘as soon as possible.’ She said that ‘it was yet to be determined’ if the Chinese plant was the source of the problem that led to the spike in reports of problems with the drug’s use. Heparin is made from pig intestines. Ms. Robello said that she did not know whether the pigs used to produce the suspended product, made by Baxter International, came from China. Heparin is used widely in dialysis, heart surgery and chronic care hospitals. Baxter manufactures half of the nation’s supply of the drug, and the company’s suspension of its production of multiuse heparin vials is expected to lead to shortages. A Baxter spokeswoman, Erin Gardiner, said her company bought the active ingredient for the drug from another concern, which she would not identify. She said that company had plants in the United States and China. The Government Accountability Office recently reported that at its current inspection pace, the F.D.A. would need at least 13 years to inspect every foreign drug plant that exports products to the United States. The office, an independent arm of Congress, also found that the F.D.A.’s computer systems were deficient and it had little idea how many plants had been approved for exports to the United States. – NY Times

The good news is our trade deficit actually fell although only with our decent trade partners.

Despite a soaring foreign oil bill and another record deficit with China, the overall U.S. trade deficit declined in 2007 after setting records for five consecutive years. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit dropped to $711.6 billion last year, a decline of 6.2 percent. The trade deficit with China continued to rise, jumping by 10.2 percent to $256.3 billion. That was the largest gap ever recorded with a single country, as Chinese imports surged despite a string of high-profile recalls of tainted products. The Bush administration credits its free trade policies for spurring strong growth in exports while critics contend that even with the lower overall deficit, the imbalance is still nearly double what it was in 2001, the year Bush took office.