Obama Socialist Party member 1996?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by madanthonywayne, Oct 9, 2008.

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Socialism is as American as the Town Square in every New England town, and the meeting house, and the Grange system.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Democratic governance of economic infrastructure is socialist.
     
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Questions Remain

    Questions Remain

    There are questions that remain unanswered because the conservative approach to the issue is distortion, hot air, and tilting windmills.

    Reiterating #51 above, I would simply ask:

    • If "it was especially troubling because [Obama] was speaking to a foreign dignitary on a matter of US national defense", how is any president supposed to speak to foreign leaders about treaty-related matters?

    • Why do conservatives like to pretend that reality doesn't apply—that is: What part of the idea that election-year grandstanding and blind-faith opposition in Congress might interfere with the resolution of international negotiations is suddenly so new and unheard of?

    So what is the deal, then? We have a proposition that a president speaking to a foreign prime minister about treaty negotiations is somehow troubling. We have the implicit, at least, suggestion that acknowledging years-long, cultish opposition to a nuclear arms treaty with Russia might interfere with resolving the outstanding issues is somehow selling out the United States. What the hell? Are conservatives this stupid, or is it that they think the rest of us are?

    This whole "hot mic" scandal manufactured in lieu of any substantive issue seems to require that people ignore history. So is it that conservatives are actually stupid enough to believe this truck of horse excrement, or that they think everyone else is stupid enough to believe them?

    I really would like an answer to this. The conservative politic has, for years, relied tacitly on the idea that history doesn't exist. And at its heart, this reliance on stupidity and short attention spans is more than a little insulting.
     
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  7. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    The stupid tired rhetoric is even more moronic today than it was years ago. No doubt the haters will never go away. But at least there is satisfaction in their own recognition that they are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Rants like the one here have all backfired and exposed them as the mean bubbleheads we have long known them to be.
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    One of the curious things ....

    One of the curious things about TRMS is its reliance on documentable sources. There are, of course, caveats, such as the idea of an anonymous source in an article cited by the show, but in the end, if you want to know where that crew is getting the information part of their infotainment, Maddow and her staff have a very curious habit: Every evening, after the show has aired, they post to their blog a list of hyperlinks to sources.

    So when someone says, of O'Reilly or Hannity or any of the FOX crew, "Where do they get this stuff?" sure, it's not a huge effort most days to Google the information. But TRMS? Where do they get this stuff? Go to their blog; they actually tell you.

    It's a small gesture, to be certain, but also one of value.

    And there is also the fact that Steve Benen and Laura Conoway, both producers for the show, tend to write better blog entries than most. Between the extremes of punch-line humor to the one, and tsunamis of arcane details to the other, The Maddow Blog is well calculated to both reach general audiences and elevate the infotainment discourse a couple notches.

    Trust? That, I suppose, is a matter of politics. If, as seems to be the case with many leading right-wing voices, things like science and fact are not trustworthy, there's not much you can say about Maddow or anyone else they might doubt.

    But the disqualification of a voice from the discourse for simply being (A) liberal, and (B) popular, reflects the paranoid double-standard of the right wing. As Chipz demonstrates, the right wing distrusts liberals who are effective in delivering information; whether or not that information is accurate is beside the point—Maddow is a popular liberal, therefore her producer, who was hired for the quality of his produce, is disqualified.

    When people blast right-wing voices for being right-wing, it's in no small part because the information those pundits and hosts are pushing is bogus. The difference is, to some degree, the question of bending reality to the party line, or reflecting reality in the party line. And while we cannot say that Democratic supporters and sympathizers have any sort of monopoly on the latter, or general immunity to the former, disqualifying a reliable voice that happens to be making an accurate and relevant point simply for being liberal is not so much intellectual dishonesty as it is intellectual sloth or, worse yet, intellectual cowardice.

    Because after the disqualification for being liberal is said and done, the questions remain:

    • If "it was especially troubling because [Obama] was speaking to a foreign dignitary on a matter of US national defense", how is any president supposed to speak to foreign leaders about treaty-related matters?

    • What part of the idea that election-year grandstanding and blind-faith opposition in Congress might interfere with the resolution of international negotiations is suddenly so new and unheard of?​
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Fernia, Will. "Links for the 6/14 TRMS". The Maddow Blog. June 14, 2012. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.MSN.com. June 16, 2012. http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/14/12229913-links-for-the-614-trms
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2012
  9. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    4,955
    Bob Altermeyer has done a piece in the Tea Party types that has some relevance:

    http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/drbob/Comment on the Tea Party.pdf

    Chipz is drawing a false equivalence between people like Limbaugh, and someone like Maddow. They would likely both be insulted by the comparison, though only Maddow would be justifiably indignant. I believe that one of the dividing lines between left and right is that the majority of those on the left are interested in dealing with facts and evidence, and though no one is ever overjoyed at being presented with evidence that they are dead wrong, in general terms, the left are more likely to welcome information that disproves their beliefs. Facts don't matter to the tea party types. Ad baculum arguments are just fine with them. When someone responds to the financial crisis by insisting that it just proves the need for even more deregulation, you know you are not dealing with someone who arrives at their opinions by reasoned argument.
     
  10. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

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    617
    Wow, just Wow! Such a great wealth of knowledge unveiled there. I am completely defeated.

    I now bow to the master of history.
     
  11. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

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    617
    Oops, lost again. Wow the wealth of knowledge between you and iceaura is stunning. I guess Fools rush in (me) where the wise refuse to go (you & iceaura).

    I guess I will just scamper back to the mountain. I am obviously outmatched here.
     
  12. Cavalier Knight of the Opinion Registered Senior Member

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    157
    @iceaura: "Commonwealth" didn't mean what you suggest it meant. The term "wealth" is used in the older sense of "well-being" (or as in "the common weal") not in the sense of material/monetary possessions or resources. The term alluded to a political unit established for the common good of its citizens, not a political unit in which all resources were held in common.

    By the 17th century, it had basically come to mean a "republic".
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    54,036
    Yes please. Get lost.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The distinction you propose - between the centrality of common wellbeing and community control of wealth - was not nearly as sharp then as now, and did not distinguish two opposed economic or political ideologies. The founding members of the in fact "commonwealth" colonies (the term was also used in marketing) were not simply or merely or essentially independent entrepreneurs setting up private capitalistic ventures in the New World.

    There were early colonies formed as essentially capitalistic enterprises in the modern sense, based on what we now term corporate investment for profit in the modern sense of capitalistic corporation, and essentially "exploitative" - in both pejorative and non-pejorative senses - of the colony resources. The wellbeing of the colony itself was not a primary interest, but merely one of several factors in its profitability. And these colonies contrasted with the "commonwealth" ones - a few even went bankrupt. That is something a commonwealth - in the sense used at the time - cannot do as an entity (apart from its individual investors or members). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_colony None survived the Revolution and Statehood. http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/Laws-at-Jamestown/VA_Company.pdf

    When Virginia revolted against the Crown and won, it recognized its new status (freedom from English corporate exploitation) partly by adopting a popular name for such community ascendancy - "Commonwealth" - in much the same way the new government in Russia adopted the name "Socialist". Marketing. "Commonwealth" survived into Statehood. "Corporation" did not.

    The point was that the US was not founded on or in modern corporate capitalism. An entity such as we now take for granted as the modern corporation in the US would have been a criminal enterprise in the early years of the United States - forbidden by law, with heavy penalties. The chartering of corporations in the early States was carefully done, sharply limited, and rigidly governed by local political agency. Corporations that could not prove their benefit to the community, that could not demonstrate their purpose in community good or accomplishing some community task, did not legally exist.
     
  15. WINSTON Registered Member

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    17
    i dont think the term socialist means anything anymore. you have the new president of france who claims to be a socialist, but his policies tell you otherwise. most of his actions would indicate that he is a capitalist. dominique strauss khan also claims to be the socialist, yet he used to head the imf. how socialist can you be if you head the imf? i dont think you can get any more right wing than the imf. they are strictly privatisation, and austerity
     
  16. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    The American right wing (Republican/Tea Party) has become so extreme, that anything other than party orthodoxy is labeled socialism, communism, fascism, etc. regardless of fact or rational thought.
     

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