The Obamanation

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

yeah, 'cause everything was fucking peachy before Obama came in.

We liked it. When we turn Obama out, we'll have more to like again.

Politically, though, this will make you sad, Dana, as another socialist leader gets the sack.

There's a whole lotta peachy we're getting static about instead of just getting it. The Democratic Party has fallen a long way since JFK. We'll prosper better when they are sidelined, and the Machine Radicals shipped back to Chicago -- and hopefully kept from office there also. We're annoyed because we have better values than this non-capitalist that got elected with no help from yours truly.

[DanaC]

*chuckles*

Another socialist leader?

To quote Jon Stewart:

'You haven't got a fucking clue what socialism is have you?'

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

We liked it. When we turn Obama out, we'll have more to like again.

Politically, though, this will make you sad, Dana, as another socialist leader gets the sack.

There's a whole lotta peachy we're getting static about instead of just getting it. The Democratic Party has fallen a long way since JFK. We'll prosper better when they are sidelined, and the Machine Radicals shipped back to Chicago -- and hopefully kept from office there also. We're annoyed because we have better values than this non-capitalist that got elected with no help from yours truly.

Look, man.

This is a perfect example of telling a lie. President Obama, my President, *YOUR* President is a capitalist, not a socialist. Your remarks like this are subject to the same political speech reality check I described recently when I revealed Michele Bachmann's crap.

When I hear something like this I ask myself, "why is this person telling this lie?"

They're clumsy. This is bad.

You're not clumsy, I don't think you're stupid (though you hold fast to some stupid positions). I don't think this applies in this case.

They're pandering. This is worse.

You're not pandering since you're not running for office, but there's a complimentary category of political proselytizing, and you do it all the time. This qualifies, but only incidentally since we're not being asked to do something, you're only indirectly supporting your position by portraying your opponent negatively. This negative campaigning is successful, but vile and foul and leaves a permanent stain on those who persist in it. Not to mention the damage to our society, which is significant.

They're uninformed. This is worse still.

I'm undecided here, you may be uninformed but I doubt it. I think you know what socialism is, I think you know what you were saying, and you said it anyway.

They believe. This is the worst.

Again, I am undecided, but don't think this is the case. I think you know better.


Which brings us to the new category: They lie. This is just as bad as belief, but with extra-crunchy evil craven malice. Smears like this pollute our conversation. You are responsible for this toxic spill, though the clean up work falls to others, like me, like DanaC. Inevitably, there will be traces of this poison left behind as some will remember the association. You, sir, should be ashamed of your behavior.

I don't want my leaders *or my fellow members of the electorate* to be clumsy, or pandering or uninformed or worst of all, true believers of false ideas. I will not tolerate lying and the destruction it causes. I deserve better and so do you. I demand better. And so should you.

[glatt]

Thanks BigV. You have much more energy than I do.

[DanaC]

*applauds*

Bloody hell. Well said.

[DanaC]

Y'know, there are plenty of sensible and coherent arguments against socialism, without having to reinterpret it in order to smash it down.

To be fair though, there's been something of a reinterpretation on the left as well. I call myself a 'socialist' but that doesn't mean I believe in a fully communal society. I believe in a mixed economy. At no point during the history of trade and markets has there ever been any evidence to suggest that the free market, or the people and businesses that operate within it, can be relied upon to act entirely in ways that add to, rather than detract from, the common good. There have to be controls. There is also absolutely no evidence throughout that time that left to its own devices the market acts as an equaliser of opportunity, or that all of a civilised society's needs can be filtered through the free market.

Even Adam Smith believed that where the market failed to adequately meet the needs of the nation the government had a duty to step in. Particularly with regards education. These days, most nations include basic healthcare alongside education as a necessity that cannot be trusted entirely to the market.

Really, the main difference between a modern 'socialist' and the right, is where we all draw the lines. Frankly, if you don't believe there should be any lines, then you're not dealing with political or economic realities.

But even on those definitions, the notion that Barack Obama and Warren Buffett are socialists is laughable to anybody with an ounce of political insight.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by DanaC

the notion that Barack Obama and Warren Buffett are socialists is laughable to anybody with an ounce of political insight.

like that part

[TheMercenary]

What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.

So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.

I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.

Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."

Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.

Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"

As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."

Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.

While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."

From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.

[TheMercenary]

Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.

Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."

In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.

Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.

But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/09...s-problem.html

[TheMercenary]

D'Souza says that the socialist label doesn't entirely fit Obama. The case is much worse. Obama is not merely a social democrat in multicultural clothes. He is, according to D'Souza, a follower of his African father's anti-colonial ideology, which D'Souza describes as containing "noticeable strains of Marxism and socialism," but essentially signifying hostility to European civilization and to its neo-colonial spawn, the United States of America. In this view, American power is essentially racist. Overall, Western civilization did not achieve anything special, except to enrich itself by looting and enslaving Africans and Asians and native Americans. According to D'Souza, Obama's anti-colonial ideology sees the United States as a racial despotism, built on the denial of human rights, extreme exploitation and minority extirpation. If D'Souza is right, then we have in the White House someone who is much more dangerous than a socialist. If D'Souza is right, we have a man in the White House who is animated by hatred of the very thing entrusted to his care. "It may seem shocking to suggest that this is Obama's core ideology," says D'Souza. "I am saying nothing more than what Obama himself says: that his father's dream has become his dream. It is a dream that, as president, he is imposing with a vengeance on America and the world."

http://www.financialsense.com/contri...er-in-the-dark

[TheMercenary]

So, is Mr. Obama trying to form The Socialist Republic of America? Or are the accusations mainly a political weapon, meant to stick Obama with a label that is poison to many voters and thus make him a one-term president?

As is often the case in politics, the answer is in the eye of the beholder. Some people feel genuinely certain that Obama aims to make America into a workers' paradise – a land where government-appointed pay czars tell Wall Street tycoons how much they can make and where the feds take large ownership positions in companies like General Motors (GM) and insurance giant American International Group (AIG). Even if Obama is not a card-carrying Socialist, they say, he displays a disdain of the private sector.

"You start with his apparent acceptance that there are major segments of the US economy for which it is reasonable for the US government to own or manage," says Michael Johns, Heritage Foundation policy analyst, "tea party" movement leader, and former speechwriter for President Bush. "Look at the auto industry, mortgage industry, the health-care industry to some extent, and, obviously, banking."

Others just as assuredly refute the idea that government involvement in failing industries defines a president as socialist – or that wealth is being redistributed from the Forbes 500 richest Americans to the nation's "Joe the plumbers."

What Mr. Johns, Mr. Gingrich, and others brandishing the "socialist" s-word are really complaining of is a return to the policies of John Maynard Keynes, the English economist who advocated vigorous government involvement in the economy, from regulation to pump priming, says labor historian Peter Rachleff of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.

"Socialism suggests getting rid of capitalism altogether," says Dr. Rachleff. "Mr. Obama is not within a million miles of an ideology like that."

For what it's worth, socialists deny that Obama is one of them – and even seem a bit insulted by the suggestion.

"I have been making a living telling people Obama is not a socialist," says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America. "It's frustrating to see people using our brand to criticize programs that have nothing to do with our brand and are not even working."

Adds Billy Wharton,co-chair of the Socialist Party USA: "I am not even sure he's a liberal. I call him a hedge fund Democrat."

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politic...e-evidence-say

[BigV]

Obama Africa, America sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer vitae tellus dui. Mauris iaculis mi ac magna aliquet a tempor magna mattis. Cras a sem accumsan massa posuere blandit. Cras posuere nisi ut nibh malesuada id aliquet nisi feugiat. Vestibulum ornare eros a enim imperdiet et ultrices purus lobortis. Nunc in metus est, et lacinia nulla. Suspendisse Socialist potenti. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Aliquam Africa pellentesque arcu nec scelerisque. Duis fermentum dui massa. Vivamus laoreet volutpat magna, id ultricies quam suscipit ullamcorper. Sed varius scelerisque aliquam. Mauris faucibus Socialist est non augue rhoncus bibendum. Duis euismod America interdum Obama sed volutpat. Vivamus pellentesque commodo lectus vitae euismod.

Suspendisse elit Africa, dapibus ut commodo quis, faucibus id orci. Ut tellus risus, faucibus eget mattis quis, ultricies sit amet velit. Pellentesque nec America Africa. Aliquam dictum blandit erat eu consectetur. Fusce tincidunt, nisl at luctus porta, Obama mauris lacinia Socialist odio, sit amet dignissim velit turpis sit amet arcu. Vestibulum fermentum erat at erat lobortis ornare. Sed aliquet, tellus ac pulvinar America dignissim, lacus nunc venenatis arcu, sed tincidunt arcu odio id Obama. Aenean semper laoreet odio tincidunt interdum. Donec sit amet turpis dui.

Vestibulum ante Africa primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Etiam pulvinar, tellus quis dignissim rhoncus, tortor magna volutpat neque, id feugiat nulla lectus sit amet lacus. Obama vitae sem America at Socialist dui aliquet eleifend at ac magna. Pellentesque interdum quam viverra Africa adipiscing ac iaculis tortor rhoncus. Praesent non lectus nec lacus sodales lobortis eget at nulla. Curabitur odio arcu, adipiscing in auctor rhoncus, vehicula sed Africa. Integer eu purus lacus, at cursus erat. Donec sodales erat Socialist odio. Maecenas augue massa, elementum id commodo lobortis, consectetur sit amet orci. Aenean consectetur, neque quis rutrum tincidunt, nulla Africa mollis tellus, sit amet porttitor lectus sem sed turpis. Sed fermentum mi vel metus porttitor quis pulvinar felis ornare. Integer vel enim risus, eget tempor Obama. Duis non orci nec neque consectetur dignissim.

Mauris eget America nulla Socialist ligula, at sodales elit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Duis sit amet Africa sed Obama euismod feugiat quis et tellus. Proin sodales auctor metus, in iaculis felis scelerisque vitae. Donec porttitor dapibus nisl sed pellentesque. Vivamus laoreet gravida quam at porttitor. Etiam lacus augue, rhoncus congue rhoncus sed, fringilla sed Obama. Mauris sit amet magna massa, a suscipit neque.

Obama non America non Obama vehicula placerat. Vivamus ut sem sit amet dui elementum condimentum. Morbi est augue, vestibulum sit amet scelerisque vitae, dapibus vitae Africa. Obama congue eleifend ligula, pellentesque Africa massa mattis sed. Aenean vulputate mollis tortor, sed America Socialist suscipit eros vestibulum non. Quisque id condimentum eros. Ut et massa ligula. Sed congue condimentum diam, non vulputate massa posuere nec. Pellentesque dui Obama, tincidunt at malesuada quis, bibendum in eros. Duis adipiscing adipiscing augue sed facilisis.

In nec felis nisl, ut gravida risus. Praesent sollicitudin pulvinar Obama ac convallis. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Duis elit massa, commodo id venenatis Socialist volutpat, tincidunt et augue. Aliquam posuere iaculis neque ut accumsan. Suspendisse interdum laoreet Africa molestie hendrerit. Obama Africa Africa sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce vel eros ac odio iaculis ullamcorper. Obama pellentesque viverra enim. Maecenas sit amet cursus tortor. Vivamus at risus odio.

Pellentesque eget felis ac elit viverra Socialist dapibus sit amet quis augue. Nunc volutpat mauris id sem tincidunt eu mollis justo accumsan. Duis lectus neque, porta eu tincidunt nec, hendrerit quis felis. Morbi placerat odio et leo commodo porttitor. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nam tristique America vehicula orci sodales fringilla. Nam vestibulum purus eget metus condimentum imperdiet. Nunc vitae ante massa. Donec a ornare ante. Sed nec odio quam, et commodo massa.

Integer eu dui vitae massa semper aliquam vitae at Obama. Morbi lobortis tellus quis velit suscipit tincidunt. Nulla laoreet sollicitudin metus id imperdiet. Curabitur fringilla sollicitudin ante, sodales tincidunt enim semper quis. Vestibulum et metus in enim interdum elementum. Curabitur posuere nisi nulla. Etiam eu ullamcorper lectus. Quisque sed enim lectus, eu porta turpis. Nulla facilisi.

Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Phasellus massa velit, suscipit ut pharetra id, ornare at diam. Suspendisse rutrum consectetur aliquam. Suspendisse potenti. Obama id dui et lectus malesuada imperdiet. Duis mi purus, feugiat ut condimentum at, consequat eget magna. Quisque neque Obama, cursus id lobortis quis, rutrum non lectus. Nulla ac arcu ut mauris lobortis tincidunt et et enim.

Donec nec nunc vitae America vehicula iaculis vel in orci. Duis eget volutpat Obama. Donec eget turpis vitae nulla molestie hendrerit. Vestibulum congue pellentesque enim, id adipiscing Obama eleifend ac. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Obama at erat nec

[infinite monkey]

*nods knowingly, pensively even*

Yes, V...I see what you're saying.

[infinite monkey]

I like this TOTALLY RAD SCIENTIFIC JARGON:

Originally Posted by that one article

"Socialism suggests getting rid of capitalism altogether," says Dr. Rachleff. "Mr. Obama is not within a million miles of an ideology like that."

Not within a MILLION miles? Not a MILLION? Wow. How about within a THOUSAND miles, Doctor Nonsensical Hyperbole? Huh? A thousand?

[BigV]

So, is Mr. Obama trying to form The Socialist Republic of America?

mercy, what is your answer to this question?