if there's anything that makes my blood boil about the bush administration (well, american politics in general over the past few decades) is the favoritism they play towards US corporations.

the govt' just decided to slap tariffs on Hynix, a South Korean DRAM maker ... a tariff of 44% after Micron (a US company) went whining to the Feds ... i mean, regardless of whether Roh's government is subsiziding those chips, it's only going to hurt the Korean government. i mean, what are we to complain if the korean taxpayers want to help foot the bill for cheaper DRAM? i'm sure not going to complain.

why we slap tariffs on countries ... this type of thing is what pisses off other countries. we demand access to their markets and then restrict acccess to ours whenever a competitor gets too close. we also put a tariff on the vietnamese "dumping catfish."

dont' forget we have those steel tariffs that everyone hates ... and there was something ... oh yeah the softwood wood dispute between the US and Canadia.

arrggghh. free markets, people! we only hurt ourselves when we don't play by the same set of rules. and it's these small things that chip away at our credibility when we want to go do something legitimately important (e.g. iraq).

oh yeah, a quick side note so i don't have to do this in a separate post: i've said this tons of times before, but iran is one of the hopeful places in the middle east. the young are educated and aware of the better lifestyles of the west. they will solve their own problems; the us has to make sure not to get too involved. put pressure on the mullahs, but don't get overtly involved. it will look really bad if we have troops in afghanistan (which borders iran), iraq (which borders iran, _and_ iran itself.