A quick tour of the Web turns up hundreds of socialist-inspired images of Barack Obama– Obama as Che Guevara on “Che Obama Socialist” t-shirts; Obama as a radical Marxist at Obama4Socialism.net. Even the Investor’s Business Daily penned a series of editorials on the Obama agenda called, “The Audacity of Socialism.”
So if the United States has elected a socialist president, the socialists must be pretty excited, right? Claiming just a single U.S. Senator (Vermonter Bernie Sanders) and exactly zero members of the House of Representatives as their own, putting a socialist in the White House would represent the greatest achievement of any socialist alive today.
But there’s just one problem. The socialists won’t claim Obama as their own. They won’t even call him a socialist.
Frank Llewellyn, the National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest socialist organization, said Obama is most definitely not one of them. “He’s not any kind of socialist at all,” Llewellyn told me this week. He called the president “a market guy,” which is hardly a compliment coming from a man with serious reservations about market capitalism. “He’s not challenging the power of the corporations,” Llewellyn added.
This made me ROFL: “Clearly the Republicans are saying it since that’s all they’ve got to say. I don’t believe they’re going to stop making this charge.
No such thing as bad publicity I guess. Also, evil often sows the seeds of its own demise.
“A Market Guy” This guy has nailed who Obama actually is! Obama does everything to promote the Obama. His speeches are nothing but infomercials for the naive youth and liberal hacks of this country. Sorry no returns or exchanges.a
Wait, are you saying that people would make things up or exaggerate things? That’s umpossible!
Statist or Collectivist are probably better terms. Progressive is probably the most accurate. #3 – Don’t confuse Conservative with Republican – Neither Nixon nor Bush were really Conservatives. Progressive Republicans.
What’s really funny is how the liberals think conservatives feel that the masses are nothing more than a resource to be used up by corporations without realizing that their own leadership feels that the masses are nothing more than a resource to be used up by the government.
The true reality is that the masses are nothing more than a resource to be used up by the major political parties. The cheery upside? We’re all gonna die in 2012.
And Nixon said “I am not a crook”.
His policies speak for themselves, regardless of the semantics.
“We’ve got to spread the wealth around”. BO.
Obama is more of a Hamiltonian Federalist, but then again most of the people here debating labels don’t know what most of them mean, anyway.
Few labels “truly” characterize anyone. Thats why only idiots rely on them. Small “i” idiots. Small letters–“tending towards”, not the perfect form thereof.
Amusing how many idiots are still DOLTS!!
#27, Chuck is right.
I remember the Klan said they would be for or against a politician, whichever would help get their candidate elected. The leftists are no better.
@33 I LOVE how tin foil hat crazy Republicans have become! The earth is 6,000 years old, evolution isn’t real, creationism is science, the government wants to murder grandma, Obama is a secret non-American Muslim plant, just one nut ball crazy thing after another! Anti-reality, anti-intellectual, anti-science. Just crazy.
Bush said the government can take you without a warrant, hold you forever without access to a lawyer or defense if the President ‘deems’ you a terrorist (no legal definition)…Bush said he can listen to your phone calls and read your emails without a court order…and said torture by the U.S. Government is ok. He’s not a fascist? But the guy who wants to give us a super watered down health care system, 1/2 of what Canada has, is fascist!
Read a book sometime instead of burning them. To use my favorite quote: “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think means”
# 9 Hugh Ripper said,”… a moron like Rush.”
Hugh, I can’t listen to more than about 10 minutes of Limbaugh before his ego makes me nauseous. (I feel much the same about Al Franken.) But you can’t honestly believe he’s a moron! The man has taken his high school education and background as a salesman and leveraged a conservative dogma into huge personal fame and fortune. I wish I were that stupid.
#35–Oh Animby==in context, clearly Hugh means, and is correct to say, that Rush is a moron==he appeals to and works up the moron component in us all. I can’t listen to Rush more than 15 seconds, you listen for 10 minutes (heh, heh!!!) and some listen all day long and then come here to post for 10 minutes. ((double heh, heh==4 times I think.))
10 minutes huh???? Thats all it takes to defend the guy???
You should be ashamed wasting your advanced degrees in that way. More a skill than an education?
#40–good?debate==faux hysteria? There is nothing fake about what I post, and nothing hysterical.
“As to your argument that you should mix all systems together,” /// No “should” about it. Just reporting the facts of the matter.
Once someone is mature enough to recognize that all the “isms” are theoretical models and that NONE OF THEM work in the real world, then what is left but recognizing PRAGMATISM and the end to which it is put==the general LONG TERM welfare, or the short term interests of the few?
“but one system is based on the idea of freedom of choice” /// hah, hah. Yes, freedom of choice of the choices given to you. VERY SHALLOW ANALYSIS good?debate. Think thru it. You are close to a breakthru if you only live up to half the potential of your nom-de-poop.
You have incorporated the labels well good?debate. Rethink.
Smartalix (#25) for the win!!! Why around you around more often? Miss your posts…
#42, …
You see, there’s the problem, it always takes several posts to get silly little points understood properly. I was pointing out that you said I have hysteria and that that claim is really faux hysteria. There is no hysteria.
Now that that’s out of the way… I said “No system is going to satisfy everyone’s wants and desires…” and my intent was to imply there isn’t a perfect system. You say “NONE OF THEM work in the real world…” Ok, if that’s true then we still have to decide what kind of system that doesn’t work that we’ll use.
You think that the market system doesn’t give you any good choices (…freedom of choice of the choices given to you.). So, if that’s true our disagreement is simply that I would want the system that allows me to choose, even among bad choices, rather than have the system picked for me.
Hey!! My longish answer got cybernated!!!
In short–you have overinvested in the notion you still don’t have lots of choices to make under any government program.
The notion that you would prefer yourself having a range of bad choices rather than having a better choice made for you by someone else, even as starkly said, should strike you as self defeated, a bit disingenuous, and only possible to say when you don’t need health care.
Come to think of it, my longer answer was a whole lot snarkier, therefore better. ((Checked my clipdiary program==nothing but souffle recipes there. Copy before submitting.))
Hmmm, a real live disagreement, imagine that!
“The Republicans are doing the same thing they did when Roosevelt was president — confusing somebody who is trying to save capitalism from itself with somebody who is trying to destroy it. (Obama) is not trying to destroy capitalism.”
O Rly? How exactly did Roosevelt’s prohibition on the private ownership of gold fit in to some glorious plan to save free enterprise?
Here’s a good FDR quote for you: “Why should he [Stalin] have all the fun?”.
Yeah, that FDR was some kind of Adam Smith clone!
The left is so full of shit!
#54–somebody==good thing we live in a constitutional republic instead of a communist dictatorship. I never heard of Uncle Joe choosing happy endings for anyone. Could have made a stay in the gulag a bit more tolerable?
#12 – you got one thing right. If everyone were required to carry guns, we would have a much better and safer society (after the first year weeded out those incapable of functioning in a civilized manner.)
MAny of the forms of Gov. do work..
Even ours..as long as the Fundamentals ARE DONE.
When they arent the Gov must step in and FIX/FORCE it to work.
Corruption of any part, MESSES IT ALL UP.
And that MAYBE 50 people in the USA control MOST everything…its a shame.
“Its generally agreed that Hitler was a Fascist.”
Yes, and it is generally agreed that the Great Depression was caused by a failure of pure free enterprise, that Booth was working alone when he shot Lincoln, that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot JFK, that the Fed exists to “keep inflation down”, that Regan made draconian budget cuts….
#70 Somebody
I think you’ll find that Marx saw it as the transition between capitalism and communism, but nice a try to crowbar the Democrats (your liberal democracy)into Marxism.
Would you like a shovel?
Hmmm….
and then there’s this.
You know Hugh, you really ought to learn to use google.
#73 Hugh Ripper said
“#70 Somebody
I think you’ll find that Marx saw it as the transition between capitalism and communism, but nice a try to crowbar the Democrats (your liberal democracy)into Marxism.”….
Where do you get the idea I am trying to equate liberal democracy with Marxism? Or for that matter with the Democrat party?
This guy says it better: http://mises.org/story/1937
#83 Uncle Patso said,
“3) I love hearing the Viol when it’s played well…”
Ok, so the “a” with the grave accent didn’t show.
But you just _KNEW_ I meant the the musical instrument.
Its because you are so superior.
#82 Hugh Ripper said,
“Haha! What a source! The bloke who runs the … website…”
Actually, I think you’ll find that Ludwig von Mises never ran a web site.
“Not having the time to read much of his stuff, I’m unable to critique it.”
Don’t bother, I’m sure your intellect is vastly superior to that of von Mises in your own estimate.
Hugh Ripper and Uncle Patso,
I notice you are silently passing over a lot of solid argument to find the occasional typo or misspelling.
I must say, I really admire your ability to economize on thought.