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Obama surrounds himself with socialist bent upon the destruction of capitalism... Van Jones the Special Advisor of Green Jobs, now there is a powerful and influential position.
Meanwhile the folks who do have clout...
Larry Summers?
Timothy Geithner?
Paul Volker?
Austin Goolbee?
Robert Rubin?
Richard Thaler?
James Gailbraith?
Robert Reich?
And did I mention the great socialist mastermind George Soros.
Now that is a list of Communist that even Joe McCarthy would have passed on.
What on earth are you people talking about? Did Obama appoint Bill Ayers to something? Are we still on this planet?
Where are all the communists on your list? I would not have appointed most of those people, were I Obama, but then I would have put actual liberals and progressives on my team, not a bunch of conservatives, as he has mistakenly chosen to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by roysoldboy
I ask these questions because it seems that Obama not only knows several of each kind but has surrounded himself in the White House with them....Obama has appointed so many of those people that one has to think that he must have known who some of them were before he appointed them.
Who?? Name names. I'm genuinely curious to know, because as far as we can tell Glenn Beck doesn't have a higher security clearance than the rest of us. His "inside scoop" on the president must be some kind of sick game he is playing on those who will listen. Good Call, Beck!
Quote:
Originally Posted by roysoldboy
If you are a liberal don't even think about refuting what I just said unless you can prove that Van Jones is not an avowed communist or that Bill Ayers is a reformed anti-capitalist.
Believe me, were it not for my insomnia and a total lack of anything better to do, I would not bother responding to someone who listens to Glenn Beck with a straight face and takes notes. We don't have to prove anything. Bill Ayers was a fart, a blip during the campaign, a ginned-up controversy that had so little to do with the election, it was like those little American flags that Fox claimed to have found in the trash after an Obama speech. YAWN.
Election "Silly Season," we understood you for what you were! Most of us did, anyway. Some people... Oh, those tenacious few! They believed everything that came their way, because otherwise why would Fox bother telling it to us? And rather than die down after a long and heated election, those little tidbits of monkey feces from wayyy out in right field keep finding their way back into the air.
While even Fox has moved on to bigger and better game (Cultural centers, your Social Security money, the President's wife), a handful of tireless do-gooders feel like silly-season rhetoric was so darned fun in '08, it deserves another good churn. Well, I say, have at it! What's the point of talking about the issues of today, when we could talk about the non-issues of two years ago? Good Call, Beck!
Last edited by chiaroscuro; 09-08-2010 at 02:05 AM..
This is how good beck is at propagating the fools. He "teaches" you a big steaming pile of far right fascist propaganda, and people think they learned some kind of secret that no one knows about but beck.
I love the schoolroom set, and the props -- the blackboard, the little glasses, the tweedy jacket.
What on earth are you people talking about? Did Obama appoint Bill Ayers to something? Are we still on this planet?
Where are all the communists on your list? I would not have appointed most of those people, were I Obama, but then I would have put actual liberals and progressives on my team, not a bunch of conservatives, as he has mistakenly chosen to do.
Who?? Name names. I'm genuinely curious to know, because as far as we can tell Glenn Beck doesn't have a higher security clearance than the rest of us. His "inside scoop" on the president must be some kind of sick game he is playing on those who will listen. Good Call, Beck!
Believe me, were it not for my insomnia and a total lack of anything better to do, I would not bother responding to someone who listens to Glenn Beck with a straight face and takes notes. We don't have to prove anything. Bill Ayers was a fart, a blip during the campaign, a ginned-up controversy that had so little to do with the election, it was like those little American flags that Fox claimed to have found in the trash after an Obama speech. YAWN.
Election "Silly Season," we understood you for what you were! Most of us did, anyway. Some people... Oh, those tenacious few! They believed everything that came their way, because otherwise why would Fox bother telling it to us? And rather than die down after a long and heated election, those little tidbits of monkey feces from wayyy out in right field keep finding their way back into the air.
While even Fox has moved on to bigger and better game (Cultural centers, your Social Security money, the President's wife), a handful of tireless do-gooders feel like silly-season rhetoric was so darned fun in '08, it deserves another good churn. Well, I say, have at it! What's the point of talking about the issues of today, when we could talk about the non-issues of two years ago? Good Call, Beck!
We had a guy at work who swore he was Red through and through.....He's now retired with 2 nice state pensions and lives on the lake....So much for the proletariat.........
I am just as proud of being a socialist as I am of being a Vietnam Veteran. In both cases I thought I was working to improve our country.
In the first case, I, as a socialist, believe that the economy for everyone develops faster if the wealth generated by industry, agriculture and resource development, is distributed throughout the economy instead of concentrated in the very top. Distributed wealth allows the increase in the number of competitive small businesses where most of the technological development is done. It also allows more of the people to be employed and to educate their children.
Wealth that collects in the hands of a financial aristocracy tends to be hoarded and placed in risk free investments. These investments are designed to maintain the status quo instead of growing the economy. A growing economy threatens the financial and social exclusivity of the financial aristocracy by allowing more people to become rich. It is much more difficult to keep the Nuevo Rich away from your daughters than some peasant.
In the case of the recent financial collapse I would have used government money to stimulate the economy by allowing single home owners to refinance their houses at the lower values after the speculative factor was eliminated. I would have helped smaller banks weather this storm by reducing their obligations to the big financial houses that created the fraud in the first place. There is no way I would have bailed out any company caught holding worthless mortgage backed securities. They knew the ‘tranched’ securities were essentially worthless but were betting they would always sell for more than they cost. This is pure speculation and must be eliminated for a financial market to operate properly. The failure of these financial flimflam men would have done much less damage than the current credit squeeze on small investors and creditors because it would have kept the money flowing in the lower end of the economy and disciplined the upper end by bankrupting the gamblers.
I am a socialist because I actually believe that a speculation and crony free market is the best way of distributing capital to where it will do the most good. Government intervention and regulation is required to keep Wall Street free of the speculators, Ponzi schemes and crony dealing that damages market efficiency.
So I may call myself a socialist but underneath it all is a firm belief in a regulated capitalist economy.
I knew a guy back in law school that believed that everyone should be paid the same wage: garbage collectors to brain surgeons. His reasoning: we all are on the Earth for the same period of time.
I am just as proud of being a socialist as I am of being a Vietnam Veteran. In both cases I thought I was working to improve our country.
In the first case, I, as a socialist, believe that the economy for everyone develops faster if the wealth generated by industry, agriculture and resource development, is distributed throughout the economy instead of concentrated in the very top. Distributed wealth allows the increase in the number of competitive small businesses where most of the technological development is done. It also allows more of the people to be employed and to educate their children.
Wealth that collects in the hands of a financial aristocracy tends to be hoarded and placed in risk free investments. These investments are designed to maintain the status quo instead of growing the economy. A growing economy threatens the financial and social exclusivity of the financial aristocracy by allowing more people to become rich. It is much more difficult to keep the Nuevo Rich away from your daughters than some peasant.
In the case of the recent financial collapse I would have used government money to stimulate the economy by allowing single home owners to refinance their houses at the lower values after the speculative factor was eliminated. I would have helped smaller banks weather this storm by reducing their obligations to the big financial houses that created the fraud in the first place. There is no way I would have bailed out any company caught holding worthless mortgage backed securities. They knew the ‘tranched’ securities were essentially worthless but were betting they would always sell for more than they cost. This is pure speculation and must be eliminated for a financial market to operate properly. The failure of these financial flimflam men would have done much less damage than the current credit squeeze on small investors and creditors because it would have kept the money flowing in the lower end of the economy and disciplined the upper end by bankrupting the gamblers.
I am a socialist because I actually believe that a speculation and crony free market is the best way of distributing capital to where it will do the most good. Government intervention and regulation is required to keep Wall Street free of the speculators, Ponzi schemes and crony dealing that damages market efficiency.
So I may call myself a socialist but underneath it all is a firm belief in a regulated capitalist economy.
Once again a perfect post Greg. Kudos to you ! I could not have said it better.
Personally though the last person I met who was a communist ( as in a real communist not some imagined one as per the bizarre and rather flexible definition of some posters on this forum) was in East Germany circa 1986.
I have met quite a few people who pose as communists ( the Che Guevara t-shirt types, about as phony as it gets) but are nothing of the sort.
At the end of the day Capitalism is the system most human beings are comfortable with. It is just the degree of Capitalism which needs to be adjusted. Regulated benevolent capitalism I have no problem with. The exploitation and abuse of workers ( and consumers also at the end of the day) I cannot abide however. It leads to the wholesale destruction of society at large. I am all for the individual but the masses must also be considered somewhere along the line, if nothing else for our own social stability.
I believe in private enterprise, property ownership and reasonable profits. I also believe that workers ( whether at home or abroad) are entitled to be treated with respect and paid a decent living wage, universal healthcare, maternity benefits etc... That we must put people before profit. Profit yes, obscene profit and the monopolisation of industry and the service industry, economic imperialism and economic slavery however are IMO not only appalling but counter productive.
We shall never have a world where all men are equals but at least there should be an attempt at narrowing the gap between the poorest and the richest.
We have been dragged down under by the unbridled and un-regulated greed of the few, causing the many to suffer immensely.
I believe in making life a little fairer and leveling the playing field for people.
I was born into a privileged background and simply because of this already had a huge advantage over most people when it came to education and employment opportunities.
Had I been a moron and a total lazy slob I would still have been way ahead of hard working , highly intelligent kids simply because of my father's wealth.
That to me is utterly wrong. I would like to think we can evolve beyond this outdated archaic model of social classism".
It is impossible to judge people's true abilities and potential unless we have all a similar starting point.
Also an unequal society is more divisive politically and socially and social ills such as crime, drugs, long term disability and health problems, lack of education, lack of political engagement etc.. can all be sourced back to poverty and social deprivation.
Communism is not the answer. It never was, because it goes against the grain of human nature. Unbridled capitalism is just as toxic though. Both are completely undemocratic. One way or another those two sustems only benefit the very top be it the Nomenklatura of Soviet Russia or the CEOS of multinational corporations and politicians . Both are equally as unfair and behave the same to the plebs and the populace. With utter contempt.
We must find a way to reform our capitalist system to enable private enterprise and individual rights within a social rights framework. Regulating the financial sector is a good way to start. Ensuring we have a society with a least a modicum of fairness seems another obvious thing.
I am one of those people who has no objections to paying her taxes. I am unlikely to ever use most of the services provided by those taxes and yet I see it as my duty as a human being to contribute both publicly and privately to those who unlike myself may not have had all the advantages I have had. I do like the fact that my money actually goes to helping others. I like the fact that because I am paying taxes somebody might not starve or be homeless or will not die because they have cancer and cannot afford treatment.
Taxes to me are a necessary evil and as long as they are well managed and utilised then I really have no problem with them. I do object to government waste and prefer more devolution towards local government but I still believe the government at the end of the day is the most efficient way to transfer services to the majority of people. I don't like big government any more than most people but I accept that some things simply cannot be done at local level and have to be taken care of centrally.
I do find this obsession that some Americans have with labelling anyone who is not right wing a communist childish, ill informed and ultimately rather pointless. Childish name calling by people who have not got a clue what communism or even real socialism is about.
I have met some real communists in my days in Eastern Europe and believe me Obama isn't one of them. Not by a long shot.
Last edited by Mooseketeer; 09-08-2010 at 07:31 AM..
wants to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism? How about just destroying imperialism (the word that many anti-capitalistic people use for capitalism).
I ask these questions because it seems that Obama not only knows several of each kind but has surrounded himself in the White House with them. If you are a liberal don't even think about refuting what I just said unless you can prove that Van Jones is not an avowed communist or that Bill Ayers is a reformed anti-capitalist. Obama has appointed so many of those people that one has to think that he must have known who some of them were before he appointed them.
Today the Beck show was a conglomerate of those he did earlier this year and he had all the things I am talking about on the show. Watch it on the internet site that I am not allowed to say the link for and then get back to me with some of your best regutation or if you aren't a prog come back with some agreement.
Most Marxists feel that the capitalist system is fundamentally flawed and will collapse of its own accord just like the Soviets did. Problems such as unemployment, alienation of people from the work force, outsoursing and the replacement of jobs by technology in business and the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands are all positive trends seen by Marxists. Marxists fully expect that when the whole structure rots sufficently very little effort will be required to kick in the door and bring the whole structure crashing down. So a real Marxist would do nothing to save the US economic system or delay the inevitable. Obama's efforts are a mater of superme indifference and tag him as not being a real Marxist. Why climb a tree and pick an unripe apple when by waiting a fully ripe apple will fall from the tree which one can stoop to pick up.
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