What makes Obama a "Socialist"?

Individual, "debating" with these entitlement losers is a waste of time. They have no reasonable arguments, so they point fingers, call conservatives inhumane, call us teabaggers and then act as if that's what we call ourselves. Attack and insult. It's all they have. Socialism doesn't work, not for long.

OK entitlement whores, have at it, this thread is another dead end. Call me what you want. I don't care. But next November watch as your masters fall in large numbers. It's going to be glorious.

 

People of little understanding are most apt to become angry when their sense is questioned.

 

True, arrogance is an inverted style of ad-hominem.

 

there have been reasonable questions asked

they have not been answered

[they never are]

there are just airy-fairy talking points about how if everyone could do whatever they wanted everything would turn out a-okay

and you call me childish?

 

actually, some do, in a sense

they are called disabled, and this may range from something simple like a clubfoot or harelip, to something utterly debilitating such as complete limblessness or severe retardation

now, the teabag--uh, i mean freetards, offer us two choices:

"don't force me to pay for your entitlements, there is a job for everyone"

[i suppose this means: bring back the freak shows]

and of course, there's that ever-ready fallback answer to everything:

"vote with your feet"

[parents, ditch the kid]

 

anyone who believes that owning guns is a right

and that eating food is an entitlement

is entitled to no respect

just exercising my rights, okay?

[when you join the human race, let us know]

 

We don't have to choose between state ownership of all companies and a market free of all regulation.

Some Republicans on the Libertarian side want to play football without a referee. Some Democrats and Libertarians on the left want the referees to play ball while the players sit on the sidelines.

How about a game where both referees and players are on the field, both doing what they are supposed to do?

In other words, we want an economy where customers and investors can reward people for bright ideas and harder work and better service to the public. People also benefit when they are free to publish and voice their opinions, even unpopular ones. With some free market we can leave state-owned economies far behind. But left to itself, such a system creates an opening for white collar crime, injustice to the needy, corporations acting against our national interest, libel, and industrial pollution. However, Adam Smith was mistaken in assuming that individuals and businesses acting in their own interest will always operate for the collective good of the nation. Business has proven again and again that it needs a referee and rules of the game. Business has a proverb that increasing owner's equity is its primary goal. That sounds innocent enough until you realize that for many companies, making money by any means necessary is justified regardless of consequence to the community, to the nation and to the environment.

Most of the disgust with government comes from cost overruns and corruption, not the concept of a referee for commerce.

But for all the support I give to economic regulation, I know that government has gone too far in squelching social freedoms.

I think that this will be an eternal balancing act for hippies, acknowledging a need for a restraining hand on unbridled capitalism, but rebelling against the "nanny state" intrusions we have seen in recent years. I think it is possible to be a social libertarian and an economic statist. In fact I think that is the path that leads to the pursuit of happiness.

 

No its not. We sensible people have to sit and watch this asinine debate between the two factions of our one-party system.

Conservatism is not inhumane - war is inhumane. But I think you will find November will not live up to the teabagger fantasy of 'cleaning house'. You will replace one ideologue for another slightly different one and claim victory, much as was done in 2008.

So OK - Obama inherited a shit pile and instead of appealing to the people who got him elected, he kowtows to that douchebag Glenn Beck and that unconscionable asshole Rush Limbaugh, and makes his policies to placate THEM.

Before anyone starts cheering the conservative victory in November, remember that the free-market bullshit policies of the so-called 'fiscal conservatives' is what got us in trouble in the first place. Conservatives are the one who gave us a trillion dollar debt, two unwinnable wars, and stood there like imbeciles when terrorists attacked us. I hope the conservatives do win, so they can finish up turning America into a third-world country, as they seem to prefer.

Look at the numbers - especially the red ones...you want more debt? More wars? More dead and wounded American soldiers? More big spending? More gap between the rich and poor? More tax burden on the middle class? More Sarah Fuckin' Palin? Vote Republican.

 

It depends on if you call catering to wall street greed "socialism." I mean, it's socialism if you're a banker receiving a bailout, right?

Then again, the politicos who are calling it "socialism" are even worse.

 

and i think i pretty much agree with you to some degree

my political beliefs are far more extreme perhaps, but i don't necessarily think those should be put into practice

baby steps . . .

and didn't this all start with the idiotic idea that the corporatism of bush, continued by obama against the wishes of the electorate, could somehow be called socialism?

fail

 

Neophyte110, the graph is wrong the last column of the graph belongs to Obama a democrat who is also a socialist or worse. Obama inherited a $500 billion deficit and now has made the deficit larger than all of the presidents before him put together.

 

It's the simple business concept of investing money now to increase productivity and lessen expenses in the future. Obama is also the first president to put forward a budget that freezes all domestic non military spending for 3 years. Real fucking socialist. Thanks teabaggers. Meanwhile, America needs $2.2 trillion invested in its infrastructure just to make what we have functioning

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=405898&f=36



America will never get any stimulus that isn't military stimulus.

 

You are ill-informed. Obama wasn't president until 2009, until well after the last budget was already passed. The last column is all Bush. Obama inherited a trillion-dollar deficit, fueled by untimely tax cuts and two unwinnable wars. Go ahead, keep voting Republican - if you want America to be a third-world country.

 

Dumb ass. I didn't say it is. But the U.S. and other capitalist nations are having to borrow massive amounts from a government that you say won't work. The Conservative Capitalists blew up their economies up in 2008 from greed, while the biggest Communist nation is getting richer and supporting us.

You should be a comedian, this is so funny. Nothing makes the elite richer than Capitalism. Have you already forgotten the economic crash in 2008 that was caused by greedy capitalists and Republican leadership.

Created by Bush and company, pun intended.

I guess it is unrealistic to challenge the intellectually challenged.

I see that you can't meet the challenge and your statement that you are not free to live your life as you choose is nothing more than a pile of rotting teabags.

If you think your intelligence is so far superior to mine, then debate me one on one on the political topic of your choice. Or, are you afraid to go toe to toe with a stupid old man? My guess is that you will come back with more insults and show everybody here that you're afraid to take my challenge.

.

 

Unlike you, Individual isn't afraid to debate anyone here. Unlike you, he is an intelligent man, albeit, misguided in my opinion. He earned my respect long ago. Unlike you he didn't copy and paste his opinions from TeaBag web sites, he knows why he believes what he does.

.

 

Reminder, China actually is pretty capitalist and has been for the past 25 years, right down to western style wealth inequality. The communist parties in China and Vietnam quit being communist in terms of economics quite a while ago. The Chinese boom has been driven by two things, the insatiable demand in the west for cheap Chinese crap, and tons of investment by western money and companies.

 

oh come on, if a bunch of ill-informed loudmouths can call obama a socialist, then they can certainly call today's china communist, can't they?

[we have always been at war with somebody-or-another . . .]

 

i want tickets, but i can't promise not to heckle . . .

[it's all i ever really do, sadly]

 

The wealthy American corporate types like to privatize the profits, but socialize the expenses, like, say, the environmental damages they cause. They talk about personal responsibility, yet there is no corporate responsibility to clean up the messes they create all over this earth. Then they save their profits offshore so they can avoid taxes. And create jobs offshore while laying people off in USA. They don't have to pay import tariffs. So what is American about them anymore anyway?

 

I'm a linux user, primarily because I worked with unix from its' beginning, so don't knock linux.

We, on different sides here, appear to lack a consensus on the definitions of many words we throw around.

When I use the word freedom, I am speaking of the absence of restraints imposed by others, including government. Obviously no society can long exist without the imposition of "some" restraints, and I think most every universally acceptable restraint is also covered by a law. Democracy begins to usurp freedom when it allows simple majorities to begin to impose additional restraints upon our freedoms in order to achieve some political agenda. Equality in every facet of life is not a "right", and government has no duty or right to criminalize the achievement of those who excel in life due to the exercise of their manual or mental labors.

It's not a question of like or dislike of progress; the real question upon which like or dislike is based is the goal, or perhaps more precisely, the means by which we are attempting to achieve those goals. Often we might be able to agree upon some goals, but we seem to differ greatly on how to best achieve them rationally and reasonably.

I'm certain that you use the word "forward" meaning toward a desirable goal, and we might find agreement as to what the final goal should be. Often there is more than one way to achieve a common goal, and the first step should always be in defining a common goal if a bipartisan method of achievement is desired, and more than a simple majority of acceptance in the methods is to be achieved. Only in that way do you produce the teamwork effort to achieve a goal.

When you use the term "freetard" are you now talking about software? I still write software for free, and consider it a hobby that I enjoy. Is there something wrong with that?