Well the flaw in this sort of thinking lies in that China itself is *officially*, on paper, a socialist country (it's essentially a one-party state governed by the Communist Party) and they do plenty of outsourcing of their own. Which really just goes to show you how meaningless the concept of socialism has become.

There are all kinds of "socialists" both serious and not in the world today, ranging from diehard Marxist-Leninists and anarchist groups on the far left to so-called "national socialists" on the extreme right and lots of others in-between. I consider myself a democratic socialist and a political moderate. Much as it tends to be considered a left wing idea, socialists both serious and not can be found all across the political spectrum in reality, driven by anything ranging from egalitarianism to environmentalism, feminism, religiosity, nationalism (right wing or left wing), a simple desire for purpose, or some combination of these things. And some people, to state the obvious, are monsters who see in socialism a concept that might allow them control over other people's lives if organized cynically and bureaucratically enough as to function in a top-down way.

To me, socialism has to be organized democratically to be serious because the whole point of it is collective ownership and management, including of the state. To that end, I believe that workplaces should be organized democratically as well. They should be controlled by their workers. And so, in the most direct answer to your friend's suggestion, I'd ask them what the odds are of workers voting to outsource their own jobs.

Mexico legalized abortion today, just days after a general abortion ban went into effect here in neighboring Texas. Another victory for Latin America's radical feminist movement that the lame, race-obsessed intersectional feminists here in the ostensibly more advanced United States have failed to replicate. Maybe if the women's movement here in this country concerned itself principally with women's issues like these Mexican activists do instead of other things only peripherally related at most...well just my thinking here.

Ya know, I'm starting to think about the possibility of just moving to Mexico City. I can learn Spanish; I hear it's an easy language to pick up. Maybe I'd be able to meet some actual like-minded women like these in-person and enjoy more rights and respect and a stronger and more meaningful bond with other human beings than I can get here in my ostensibly more civilized country. (Seriously, I was just noticing that almost half the Mexican parliament is female, as compared without one-fourth here and 29% in Canada. What does that tell you about the difference of mindset? Because it tells me that the women's movement is more serious there.) I'm poor and my family's dead; not that much tying me here and I've currently got even less to live for. Plus the cost of living's probably more affordable over there and the Covid situation isn't as bad either. I seriously have no fucking idea why so many Mexican people want to live here. It's getting to where I think I'd rather live over there.

HALLELUJAH!!! President Biden today has taken two bold steps that I couldn't approve of more:

1) He's announced a sweeping vaccine mandate on businesses both public and private employing more than 100 people, which could impact as many as 100 million Americans, and spoke to the asshole anti-vaxxers for who's pure, unmitigated selfishness I still have to wear masks at work despite having received my second shot more than five months ago in no uncertain terms, bluntly saying a bunch of stuff I believe most of us have been thinking for a while now, like: "We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us."

President Biden also announced, as part of this measure, among other things, that the Federal Aviation Agency will be doubling fines for in-flight masking violations and satisfyingly rebuked the many, many airline passengers who have responded to the masking and scheduling inconveniences their flight attendant slaves also have to deal with by using physical violence against those workers: "If you break the rules, be prepared to pay. And by the way, show some respect," he said, chastising recent incidents of "air rage" directed toward hard-working cabin crews.

I found it all extremely satisfying to hear come from the mouth of my president. Not only the new requirements, but frankly the well-deserved hostile tone and manner of delivery thereof as well. Those of you who have followed my posts over on the Covid thread may have noticed my own dwindling patience with anti-vax sociopaths and the deadly consequences their selfishness has on other people, to say nothing of my own basic freedoms. They act like children and should be scolded like children accordingly. It made me very happy.

The United States has the worst Covid outbreak in the world and the country's total number of simultaneously active Covid cases has now hit an all-time record exceeding 9 million. And within that, my home state of Texas has the nation's single worst outbreak thanks to my governor's decision to ban vaccine and masking mandates at the local level. Doesn't spare me anything 'cause my private employer isn't affected and requires me to mask at work for the benefit of unvaccinated people. Customers, who are far more often unvaccinated though, don't have to mask. I have to show them respect, but they don't have to respect me. Story of my life right there. Anyway, here in Texas we're averaging a record 19,000 new cases a day now, making us the global epicenter of the entire coronavirus pandemic. YaY us! We rock...so hard! Wait until you hear about our other accomplishments, like being the worst-polluting state in the country and one of the worst-educated as well. Also, as I've been discussing, first state in the modern era to ban virtually all abortions as of last week. Why? Because here in Texas, our government values human life, as demonstrated by its aforementioned Covid response. Speaking of being "pro-life", we also now let people carry firearms openly and without a license in public places because what could go wrong in a context of steadily rising rates of violent crime, including gun violence? And our independent power grid (because Texas) almost works. We're such an awesome and brilliant state to have elected nothing but Republican governors and legislatures for decades now!! Well these are the sorts of reasons why even in this ridiculously conservative state, Governor Abbott is now polling 9 points underwater, the worst of his governorship to date. We absolutely need presidential intervention to save lives here because our worthless governor doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us. I couldn't agree more with the most up-voted comment on that article, which was left by someone screen named Mad Grandma and reads in part: "Abbott is a disgrace to the office of Governor. He is risking the lives of all Texans just to win favor with Trump." That's the damn truth. He's the worst governor in the country.

2) The Department of Justice today also announced that it is suing the Texas state government over the recently-enacted abortion ban of which I've spoken at-length here. I've hoped aloud for federal executive branch intervention in this situation given the Supreme Court's decision to do nothing up to now despite the fact that the law brazenly violates Roe V. Wade across the board and has already had the effect of practically ending legal abortion in this state and am immensely satisfied to finally see just such a response.

To put it a certain way, as Gary Langer, the longtime director of polling at ABC News, has pointed out, in data dating back to the Harry Truman administration, "only two presidents have had a lower approval rating at this point in their terms: Donald Trump, at 37% in August 2017, and Gerald Ford, also 37%, in March 1975." In other words, relative to this point in their respective presidencies, Joe Biden is currently the least popular Democratic president in the entire history of regular poll-taking dating back to the 1940s, and the vast majority of Americans in today's surveys routinely indicate a belief that Biden is a weak president. It's easy to see why when you consider the current Covid situation, which is by some metrics the worst of the entire pandemic so far, the crime situation, the border situation, the surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban (and no I will not rephrase that), the fact that growth in the cost of living in this country has outpaced wage growth every month this year so far, or any number of other remarkable things. It's easy to see why Biden has become viewed as a weak president who can't be trusted to keep people safe, be it from foreign enemies, domestic criminals, the parasitic capitalist system, or disease. These new decisions by the White House are transparently motivated by a desire to counter that emerging narrative and recast President Biden as a strong and decisive leader. So far it's working for me. I mean I'm heartened by these actions and they qualitatively improve my opinion of this administration. Before today, I was starting to think of Biden as the worst Democratic president in more than a century, but it looks like the catastrophic fallout from the surrender of Afghanistan has served as a teachable moment for the Biden team that's yielding a new and far more redeeming approach to governance. One that actually involves doing things; big things that are good for women and good for the country. That I can get on board with!

https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/rmwcwc/south-park-you-re-going-the-wrong-way

Was out of town so a bit late on this. Seth sums up the California recall nicely as usual:

Was a bit concerning when conservatives were the only ones paying attention to this. Thankfully the masses woke up and realized what the consequences of recalling Newsom would actually be (like lunatic Larry Elder). Interesting to get another preview of what post-Trump Republican messaging and strategy will look like (still full on Trumpist). Hopefully it meets similar results nationally as it just did in Cali.

The GOP takes abandoning policy to a whole new level on the House floor (Pakman):

To me, the significant thing about the Gavin Newsom recall effort wasn't that Newsom survived it, but that, despite the current unpopularity of President Biden and the Democratic brand overall, he didn't lose any votes compared to his original election in 2018, in which he got an unusually high 61.9%. During the first year of the Trump presidency, there were lots of special elections to fill seats vacated by Trump cabinet/staff appointees and such and Republicans predictably retained those seats, as the appointees were chosen from safely Republican areas. However, the average Republican margin in these votes through the summer was down 10 percentage points compared the preceding Republican victories therein, and that proved to be a sign of things to come. It was a sign of how the off-year elections that November would go, wherein many seats had previously been won by Republicans by margins far thinner than 10 points. And it was an indication of how the midterms the following year would go, wherein Democrats led by 8.5 percentage points overall, picking up 41 House seats for their biggest midterm victory since 1974 (the year of Richard Nixon's resignation).

For these reasons, I'm taking the fact that there was no reduced margin for Newsom in this recall effort as the significant thing here. It's a warning to the Republican Party that they can't just keep fielding Trump-alike candidates and expect to get different results than they did during the Trump era. This outcome reveals that it was and is NOT just Donald Trump's sparkling personality, lifestyle, and tweets that people objected to, but the substance of his program and general attitude towards other people. Trumpism still fails politically even in the absence of Trump himself, and even in the absence of a popular Democratic president to boot.

Specifically, I would highlight the issue of Covid-19. Every notable candidate vying to replace Newsom (including the Democratic ones who sought to do so, mind you) positioned themselves as softer on the coronavirus. They wouldn't be as safety-conscious or restrictive. No vaccine passports here! And maybe we should just ditch mask-wearing, especially for unvaccinated people. You know? This was the single most unifying theme among Newsom's major detractors on the ballot. This outcome hence makes it very clear -- clearer than it's ever been -- that keeping people safe from the virus is not only the right stand morally, but also remains the winning one politically. People. Want. To live. It's a reality.

As to the Larry Elder himself, the candidate who emerged as the Newsom's principal challenger, all I can do is scoff. Polling indicated that Newsom was struggling until one Larry Elder emerged as the front-runner of the opposition. From there, Newsom was able to recast the vote not as a referendum on him, but as a referendum on the more polarizing Larry Elder instead, and Elder lost. Badly. Why? Well, illustrating why is the fact that his supporters have endlessly complained that Elder was referred to as "the black face of white supremacy." The man proposed that "reparations" payments to slave owners were called for for the loss of their property! I don't know what more they want for evidence that the man would say anything, no matter how unbelievably stupid and reactionary, to try and get the votes of white people. He also claimed on the campaign trail that employers should be permitted to fire women who become pregnant, for becoming pregnant. You can't make this shit up! That Republican voters seriously thought this was the best candidate tells you all you need to know about where they are as a party right now and how completely divorced from reality that party is.

It really do seem that the GOP is going backwards. As long as they continue to hitch their ride to Trump, he will lead them like the Piped Piper right into the abyss.

Interesting news that Cyber Ninja audit shows Biden won by a bigger lead. I wonder how long they sat on this information as they kept getting funded for this audit raking in millions. Its funny how Trump pulled the trigger so quick only to have to devise another conspiracy concerning these results. The hits just keep coming.

It is completely pointless to argue with conspiracy theorists. Their position was never based on evidence, so virtually no amount of evidence will persuade them.