:o)

I love it when American start shouting about Socialism and how bad it is for America.


Which part of state colleges, medicare, highway systems, subsidized public transit, postal service... etc etc do people not think are socialism in action?


It's ignorance, plain and simple. You here people spout about "Communism is fine on paper but it just doesn't work", well, it's exactly the same for capitalism.

The middle ground is socialism, and so far the best examples of well governed countries in the world understand a mix of socialism and capitalism keeps things ticking over nicely.

 

Damnit, Noise, don't get me started, again. It is obvious to me, given the current distribution of wealth, and the number of ways in which corporate interests trump individual rights, that unfettered capitalism has all but ruined this country for 95% of it's population.

I'm not sure when corporations acquired constitutional protections, but, based on recent Supreme Court rulings, corporations' rights to free speech trump individual privacy concerns, and the integrity of our elections (for example). Big money has taken over our country, and big money controls the media, so the media has turned socialism into a derogatory term. We have more homeless and impoverished people in this country, now, than any other time that I can remember. It takes the EPA 30 years to get any regulations through, because until enough people are sick, dying, or dead, the power brokers can execute a FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) campaign in the media and employ their lobbyists in congress to protect themselves from "evil regulations" ... while they destroy our natural resources with impunity.

I could go on for days. If anyone has time, the book, "Merchants of Doubt" has some great examples of corporate misuse of power.

I love capitalism for what it does well, but it must be kept in check. America has evolved into an oligarchy. People need to really think about what that means, before it's too late. While thinking about it, people should also bear in mind that the media is controlled by the oligarchy. The mainstream news is telling you what they want you to hear. They want to keep us divided on political, socioeconomic, racial and religious lines, so we cannot unite in an effort to take back our country, and our constitutional rights. We're all in this boat together, but as long as we are fighting amongst ourselves, we are missing the bigger threat, and we are allowing them to continue to pull the strings.

While we pay the military industrial complex billions of dollars, our children are in a foreign country, fighting for our freedom (?), while our government here at home is busy taking it away. (e.g. department of homeland security, federal ID, forcing us to buy health insurance, body scanners at airports, etc., etc.)

... I told you not to get me started.

 

Doug: Oligarchy, yes, but more specifically a plutocracy.

Anyone who doesn't get that is not only wasting his or her vote, but probably spending it dangerously against his or her self-interest. Which explains the Teabaggers, except the handful of people at the top who are using it to advance their careers.

That said, having become totally disillusioned with Obama and by the extension the possibility of any kind of progressive reform through government in my lifetime, I'm seriously considering voting a straight Tea Party ticket next year, on the theory that the only route to change is for us poor people to get pissed off enough to stage, or at least threaten, some kind of revolt. The Teabaggers will get us there fastest.

Messydom: THANK YOU. Thank you for bringing some semblince of reason and intelligence to this discussion. I love how it makes right wingers writhe in pain when you just confront them with simple truths!

Lets get real for a mintute. Obama inhereted a bad economy from Bush and hes been busy working on saving us. without his stimulus package its not a stretch to say there would be widespread worldwide chaos. Its so sad that a guy who should be held up as a true hero is villianized by hateful racists even today.

The tea party?? They should be rounded up and thrown in jail. They are a TERRORIST organization. Why are we fighting overseas against terrorists when we have so many domestically which are a far greater threat?? Its those IDIOTS in congress is why. If Obama has one flaw its that he is too kind. Sometimes I wish he had more aggression in him and he would rightfully declare martial law, round up those scum Tea Partiers and give them what they deserve. Im sorry but a racist group of people who go out of their way to get the US downgraded need to be STOPPED.

oh and you know oh my god if someone actually is crazy enough to think for a split second that the Tea Party is not 100% to blame for the S&P downgrade I have two things to say....one, omg get help. get professional help and quick... and two...

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-adviser-blames-tea-party-downgrade-155220470.html


*BOOM* owned... proof its their fault, every bit of it. honestly, could anyone really think its not the Tea Partys fault??? those facists need to be rounded up and put in Gitmo or just taken out like cockroaches. Its a modern day Nazi party period

Proof? I don't think you know what that word means. There is no proof in this context, only conjecture. You are a psychopath. You would make Hitler proud.

 

lets not resort to name calling. It was a Tea Party downgrade, we all know that and when you have the VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES calling a well organized group of hateful racists terrorists, then thats kind of hard to argue as well.

Let's not resort to name calling! You just called the Tea Party representatives "hateful racists terrorists", and you are saying, "let's not resort to name calling"!

You also called for martial law and the killing of elected representatives of the United States of America. I don't give a rat's ass what your opinion of them may be, you do not have the right to kill someone because they have an agenda with which you disagree.

That fact that you do not see that makes you a psychopath. That's not name calling, you fit the classic definition, by your own admission.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-jw-stickings/the-harsh-reality-of-tea_b_649074.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/tea-party-protests-nier-f_n_507116.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/buzzcuts/tea-party-wisconsin-recalls_n_920296_101428840.html

this is your tea party. Am i wrong for comparing them to the Nazis? no. Am I wrong to want to stop them and their sick agenda at any cost? no. These are the Nazis of our time and if only someone would have stopped Hitler before it was too late. Its not too late to stop these TERRORISTS now and we need to stop them. These horrible evil racists have already single handedly ruined Americas credit rating. They want to round up and kill mexicans and they probably want to kill and lynch black people. Someone needs to take a stand against these horrible people

Yes, it's called "voting". I'm not going to try to have a rational discussion with an irrational person.

 

the problem here is that when you are dealing with peeople like teabaggers you are not dealing with a normal person. even a typical Rethug is just stupid, greedy and wrong. while they tend to be somewhat of racists for the most part they still only try to push their warped and inedequate agenda.

with teabaggers.... here you are dealing with a terrorist. You are dealing with someone who is consumed with hatred and who will purposely tank the economy just so they can try to pin it on a black man. Violence???? while there are plenty of reports of the teabaggers getting violent, it IS only a matter of time before they get organized in force and really go wild. these are ignorant GUN OWNING redneck racists of the highest order so why wouldnt someone preemptively deal with them and the scum they got elected? its perfectly logical.

theyve already tanked the economy. theyve made no bones about wanting to lynch Obama and probably every other black person. what more do these TERRORISTS need to do???

yeah, i was just parodying those kinda people. people don't realize how much socialism is what they want. they just hear FOX news call people socialist, so it must be a bad thing! haha

All politicians should be hanged; mankind is evil and no one should be trusted with power. The end.

Love it! (1) (2)

The Dow dropped like another 600 pointes today!! economists think were heading into another recession.




THANKS GOP AND TEA BAGGERS, THANKS A LOT

Um...didn't the Dems have control of the House,Senate,and presidency for 2 years prior to the repubs taking over the House?

Oh,and did anyone realize that NO FUCKING POLITICIANS took a single cent of a pay cut. Just goes to show you the only bi-partisan thing besides agreeing to not agree is greed.

And don't forget about the lobbyists....

I'm not suggesting that they will adjust their salaries or benefits, but, to be fair, the constitution requires that any changes they make can only take effect in the next term.

 

 The problem of bad voting behavior is so complex it seems even producing a comprehensive analysis is an intractable problem in itself. It is true that everyone casting votes to re-elect truly horrible public figures like John Boehner or Mitch McConnell (never mind stark raving lunatics like Michelle Bachman or Joe Wilson) is behaving stupidly. Yet it is also that case that most of the votes cast for less monstrous leadership are also the product of uninformed impulses. Never mind how many people are too busy to become activists, most are too busy to get their heads around the most rudimentary facts about issues like public finance, macroeconomics, environmental science, etc.

 Part of the problem is a cultural meme that asserts a duty to vote, backed by ridiculous sentiments like "you don't have the right to complain if you didn't vote." First and foremost, it is a citizen's duty to be informed and thoughtful about political matters -- in casual social interaction as well as at the ballot box. If and only if that duty is accomplished should one then go forward to generate input to shape the political process. Having an opinion is not enough. Without a carefully crafted opinion, rooted in reality and inspired by the best qualities of human nature, casting a vote is as likely to harm the nation as to help it.

 A major element in the problem is media personalities that prey upon ordinary, often patriotic, people who fear the "other" -- minority religions, minority ethnicities, foreign populations, or simply people aligned with the ideological opposition. Using incendiary language to transmute fear to hatred, they take pre-existing irrational tendencies and amp them up by orders of magnitude. While they then peddle gold coins, foot powder, and iced tea to their enthralled audiences, the nation suffers as millions of people with a small chance of taking the time to go cast truly stupid votes are transformed into millions of people with a passionate commitment to supporting obviously bad ideas and blatantly deceptive leaders.

 Alas, one thing worse than a fear-addled hate-stricken electorate is no democracy at all. I hear many people of moderate political disposition say things like "there ought to be a way to fire those idiots in Congress." From Athens to England to the founding of the United States, self-government provides the only escape from life as the powerless subject of an unimpeachable authority. The modern masses may moan about the horrible job Congress does, but even a 14% approval rating is likely to translate into an incumbent re-election rate over 90%. Vestiges of tribalism drive people to support their local Representative. This is true even when supporting a less well-known challenger is the only real way of bringing about change in the legislature. Incumbency has its advantages, like free postage and powerful allies, but none are quite so influential as the "ra ra" factor of being the hometown boy or girl who "made good" by getting elected in the first place.

 Also, the entrenched position of the dominant two political parties is a wicked blight on the entire nation. Supported by the Constitutional structure of a strong executive government as well as all sorts of statutes and practices that the Founding Fathers expressly abhorred in their own lifetimes, the end result is a process that dumbs down sophisticated issues to simple-minded clashes between monosyllabic slogans. The marketplace of ideas is theoretically powerful, but it suffers greatly when two vendors aggressively crowd out all other offerings. In parliamentary democracies, where the head of state is elected by the legislature, it is easier for outsider parties to build small bases of power and inject new ideas into the political process.

 Even without restructuring the traditional American system of checks and balances, it would still be possible to do much to open up the process and encourage new inputs to the system. Yet this would involve the two entrenched parties voluntarily abandoning the many advantages they have cultivated through institutions like publicly-funded primary elections and automatic ballot access based on past voter behavior. Their racket is self-perpetuating.

 Enter Barack Obama. Through hard work in the service of noble causes, a mixed-race child born into poverty grew into a thriving success by any measure. He appears to actually believe a mix of facts and jingoistic propaganda. He sees the potential for bipartisan cooperation to accomplish serious good on behalf of the American people. His actions suggest he believes forging common ground with his partisan adversaries is more important than keeping the faith with voters who joined the calls for universal health care, increased spending on education and science, downsizing our costly nuclear arsenal, and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

 Though working with the opposition party was another of his campaign promises, it was clearly the least realistic and least helpful. It has since become a disastrous pursuit that degraded universal health care into a massive subsidy for private insurers, slashed resources available for basic scientific research (and recently also higher education grants,) funded substantial preliminary R&D on a next generation of nuclear weapons, and produced very little progress on the quest to restore due process as an American value.

 Heck, this latest round of spending cuts was so devastating in part because the President believed it would be divisive to have a second round debt ceiling gridlock just prior to the 2012 elections. Personally, I think that would be the perfect time to remind the American people that the Tea Party is composed of the kind of "patriots" eager to threaten ruin for the economy if any of their demands go unsatisfied, and the Republican Party is composed of the kind of "leaders" who can't talk a bunch of radical lunatics out of the willful degradation of American credit and credibility.

 What we are enduring presently is the aftermath of a perfect storm of bad behavior. Media windbags and partisan extremists distorted a problematic but manageable debt situation into some sort of imminent catastrophe. A coalition of ignorant and unscrupulous legislators seized on the national mood created by this fearmongering to become economic hostage takers -- placing a knife to the throat of America's credit and shouting, "gimme what I want or I'll cut her!" The public was slow to register its displeasure, many still failing to assign partisan blame, in part because Republican house organs promoted the counterfactual claim that breaking the bank at the Treasury would not inflict any actual harm on the private sector economy. Every voter who swallowed that nonsense is part of the problem.

 Eager to please even those who hate him most zealously, the President capitulated only to see the extremists' demands escalate again and again. From "give us a decent package of spending cuts and we'll consider closing some tax loopholes and ending some corporate subsidies" the debate moved to "give us $4 trillion in spending reduction right fucking now, or the bitch gets it!!!" Hours away from the point of no return, the extremists eventually accepted a plan that was only slightly less insane.

 Today, while the nation's prettier grad students scramble to find sugar daddies before the fall semester gets underway, some Republicans actually appear to be proud of the disaster they have wrought. Barring future legislation to repeal the deal (see, lefties can sloganeer too) we can expect much more national pain to follow from this pact made by fearful people acting under extreme duress. Sure, seismometer networks and space telescopes are expensive, but do we not pay a much greater price for living without volcano monitoring or inspiration from the stars?

Regards,
messydom

P.S. When it comes to showing disgust for the system I would advise against voting for the most radical Republicans available. Though I did vote for the sitting President and for Senator Dick Durbin as well, nearly all of my votes in partisan contests have gone to third party candidates. I see something to like in Libertarian principles (I actually consulted for a Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in 1994) yet I also believe the Green Party brings important new ideas into the political process. Voting outside the lines is the best way to convey disgust for the bipartisan oligarchy. That way you don't accidentally elect some sort of Palin-like abomination, but you still register as involved in the process as someone hostile to the mainstream.

messydom i agree with almost everything you have to say. most of your ideas are brilliant but please do not ever vote for radical rethuglikkkans. You dont know what you are doing. Obama may not be perfect but he inhereted this mess from Bush (aka Chimpy McDumbass) and hes doing all he can. dont let the right wing media fool you and fall for their depiction of him. when he wins his second term we all know he will do much better and get things right. this first term was just cleaning up the mess the rethugs left behind and its been hard because you have diabolical Naizs like the racist tea party who are actively trying to ruin the country just to make a black man look bad.

Yes, I am sure it will be the Republicans who got us into record debt and crashed our economy the first time who will bail us out from this massive debt that is suddenly a crisis as soon as a Democrat becomes president. We can all agree that our government spends way too much money... but lets not hold our economy hostage to try to reduce it a tiny bit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7362667n

Obama wanted to cut 4,000,000,000,000 dollars from the budget! He had a plan but those tea bagging TERRORISTS wouldnt hear any of it because they could not stand the idea of corporate tax loopholes being closed! that and they knew Obamas plan would work, would reduce spending, would save the economy and then Obama would be viewed as the hero he is.... so they conspired to stop him and his plan and now we have a market crash and a credit downgrade. Nice going GOP!!!

the goal of the tea party was stated by that old fruity pedophile racist Ron Paul back when he formed it, he said the goal was to bankrupt America. Now his dream is coming true. the GOP should not be taken seriously as a party when its populated with absolute retards like bachman or palin and then these weird creepy racists like Ron paul and his equally appalling sicko son Rand. Who names someone Rand anyway? What a fucking moron!