Tell me again about the Socialism

Standing_Ultraviolet said:

No, but Republicans did tend to give him much higher rates of support than the public in general. Even at his low point in terms of approval, he had a majority of Republican support at 55%, and tended to hover between 60-70% (much higher prior to 2006). The Republican Party held him accountable for his mistakes, but not to an extent that would have been meaningful. If everyone in the country had been a Republican, he would have theoretically been re-elected even at the low point in his popularity. Most of his disapproval came from Democrats and Independents, whose disdain for him was closer to the average in the second case, and as low as 3% in the second case. Independents were apparently driving the trend for the most part.

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Uh, you do realize that's the exact same spot Obama is in now right?

Right now Obama's support amongst liberal democrats is 86% and 68% amongst moderate democrats.

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president? - The Washington Post

DING

Republicans back to that corner aaaaaaand
Democrats in that opposite corner....

Now cool off before round 6578889....

Sorry.... that is how it sounds to an outsider looking on.... Powerful emotions!?

Thunder Peel said:

At least Republicans will hold their leaders accountable

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I take it these Republicans don't come to this forum, because I sure haven't found them here.

Instead I've had the complete wondrous fortune to have to hear time and time again how one-half of the Drone/Surveillance Era expanded the size of government because they were "trying to do the right thing" and the other did it "because they were selfish and trying to rule the country as the monarch."

You know what would save the country? People not being so utterly, droolingly stupid that they'll excuse every single action the president makes because they either have a D or R next to their name.

miniverchivi said:

Stop being a blind Obama fan-boy!


Don't get me wrong, I don't take issue with the fact that you like the president, everyone has a right to like or dislike anyone they choose...however, your posts often display this sort of unbreakable loyalty to the guy to the degree that you give him personal credit for every little positive thing that happens in government and act as if the guy is your close personal friend...what, did he & the Mrs. invite you to a white house BBQ or something?


Headline: The sky was blue today
Typical HonestTruth Response: "Let us all be grateful to Obama for his policies that have allowed the weather to be nice. Thank God for Obama and the patriots who voted for him "

I mean c'mon...nobody can have that big of a man-crush can they? I've often wondered if "HonestTruth" is a real person, or if it's just a satirical character being played by someone just to mess with all of us.

"Hey Bill, come check this out...I'm doing that hardcore democrat character on the internet again to mess with these people!"

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Bush failure = success


Obama success = failure




How Orwellian can you get?

TerranceL said:

What you think he had such a low approval rating because of only democrats?

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And Obama has a low approval rating because of only Republican?

TerranceL said:

Uh, you do realize that's the exact same spot Obama is in now right?

Right now Obama's support amongst liberal democrats is 86% and 68% amongst moderate democrats.

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president? - The Washington Post

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While that's true, what I was trying to get at is that the Republican Party really didn't hold Bush accountable for his actions. Although obviously there was a downturn in support for him, it never went below a majority supporting. Political parties generally don't hold their candidates as accountable as the public does. The low ratings Bush got were primarily from Democrats and Independents.

GarfieldJL said:

I really wish people would stop insulting George Bush...

Obama does have socialist tendencies, while Wall Street is seeing record highs, it's primarily because the Fed is propping it up. He's added more and more government control over various parts of the economy.

Obama's cronies are getting richer, cause he rewards his backers.

In any event, the best way to describe Obama would be a typical Chicago Politician.

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ALoveDivine said:

Socialism, moderate socialism at least, just means public ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy (mainly finance) in tandem with policies aimed at promoting social justice and equal opportunity. A modern form of socialism, for example, could be grounded in nationalized public finance, a universal basic income and a job guarantee. Such simple yet radical policies would end poverty as we know it.

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And of course socialism doesn't mean the end of private industry but a lot of people sure think it does.

Farmer4Christ said:

I'm all for a secular democracy with strong religious freedom. I don't believe that Christianity ought to dominate anything, but it should be there with open arms for any who wish to know the love of Jesus.

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Absolutely.

AceHero said:

And of course socialism doesn't mean the end of private industry but a lot of people sure think it does.

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I think that, in the U.S., a lot of people associate socialism with a sort of old-school orthodox Marxist-Leninism, where a vanguard Communist Party institutes a socialist government, nationalizes all industry, and starts executing its opponents because they oppose the dictatorship of the Proletariat. What they fail to realize is that Marxist-Leninism, where it still exists at all, is pretty much just a slowly (and thankfully) dying relic. It hit its zenith in the middle of the 20th century with the short-lived economic surge of the Soviet Union, and since then it's been in decline. You'd be hard pressed to find a modern socialist with any real power who actually subscribes to it in its strict formulation.

In the developed world, most socialist parties now are what would be considered social democrats. They form coalitions with other center and leftist parties and support a mixed economy, so long as it's understood that the mixed economy needs to be directed toward improving the quality of life of actual human beings rather than some an abstract sense of the "economy" as a whole (which can grow while the real quality of life for the majority of people goes down or lags significantly, as in the case of the U.S. since 2009).

In the developing world, communist parties are sometimes more inclined to Marxist-Leninism in theory, but very seldom espouse a traditional formulation. That's because, in general, they've gone down the slippery slope into pragmatic authoritarianism and no longer have a real commitment to their founding principles. I'm far from arguing that's a bad thing, since their founding principles got millions of people killed, but most modern communist parties are just nominally different from the leading parties in Kazakhstan or Cambodia, where the ruling Communist Party has either changed its name and official ideology completely or been replaced with a party including several of its old members (in Kazakhstan and Cambodia, the ideologies of their respective ruling parties are now basically "keep Nursultan Nazarbayev/Hun Sen in power until he gets so old his brain stops working properly").

HonestTruth said:

Bush failure = success


Obama success = failure




How Orwellian can you get?

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informationclearinghouse.info/article40581.htm

informationclearinghouse.info/article40575.htm

zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-23/here-reason-surge-q3-gdp

wallstreetonparade.com/2014/12/oil-crash-dont-believe-the-happy-clatter/

paulcraigroberts.org/2014/12/07/another-fabricated-jobs-report-paul-craig-roberts/

shadowstats.com/commentaries

Honestly, I really don't see Obama as a successful president. We're on the cusp of another financial crisis, and all Obama has done was enrich the 0.01% at our cost.

And as for the Farm Bill you mentioned earlier, The biotech industry are the true winners in that one.

If you move far enough in one direction, everyone who stays put seems like an extremist in the other direction.

jgarden said:

Tell me again about the Socialism

Virtually all of the world's modern democracies, that are America's allies, would be considered socialist by US standards.

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Technically speaking, a lot of them actually do have parties that consider themselves socialist. France has Parti Socialist, the U.K. has Labour, Canada has the New Democrats, Germany has Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. It's pretty much only the U.S. where that's a slur.

Fancy123 said:

Americans should listen to other Americans living abroad, they see TV and read papers written by people who say things like they are because they don't care either way, in other words totally unbiased opinions.

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Eh, I wouldn't think the opinions of expats or foreigners are "totally unbiased." They just reflect different biases than you'd see domestically--more or less.

Standing_Ultraviolet said:

Technically speaking, a lot of them actually do have parties that consider themselves socialist. France has Parti Socialist, the U.K. has Labour, Canada has the New Democrats, Germany has Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. It's pretty much only the U.S. where that's a slur.

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I find that when I talk to people about socialism we argue over the semantics of the word more than anything else. I prefer to use the word 'Democracy' to describe the social model because with socialism you see the democratization of the workplace and every industry that directly affects the people.

People also fail to understand that a socialist government would not operate in the same way ours does in terms of just electing a representative that in turn gets free reign for their term; it's very participatory and much of the power gets placed in the hands of the people.

Nice rose btw!

Is it just me, or is anyone else as inclined to ignore posts from a hammer and sickle poster as I would be a poster that choses to display that other symbol of twentieth century evil, the swastika?

elliott95 said:

Is it just me, or is anyone else as inclined to ignore posts from a hammer and sickle poster as I would be a poster that choses to display that other symbol of twentieth century evil, the swastika?

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It's just you hopefully.

elliott95 said:

Is it just me, or is anyone else as inclined to ignore posts from a hammer and sickle poster as I would be a poster that choses to display that other symbol of twentieth century evil, the swastika?

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The hammer and sickle (actually a cross and sickle in his avatar), in this context, doesn't represent the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of Maoist China, or of Democratic Kampuchea. So, no. I'm really not.

elliott95 said:

Is it just me, or is anyone else as inclined to ignore posts from a hammer and sickle poster as I would be a poster that choses to display that other symbol of twentieth century evil, the swastika?

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So far, it's just you.

Redac said:

So far, it's just you.

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Actually, I have the same concern as elliott95. Also to be blunt I find the attempts to rationalize it away to be just as concerning.