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Post by rmarks1 on Jul 22, 2019 11:20:19 GMT -5
>I don't really consider that socialism. And I doubt most people would either. ---True, but most people confuse socialism with communism. And very few understand democratic socialism, like in Norway or Denmark. And I agree, if we pay high taxes, we should expect something back from the government for our money. Unfortunately, most of our tax money goes to pork that our legislators institute to please their true masters, the organizations that give them money. Most US cities are having trouble paying for police, firefighters, etc. But we continue to waste tax money instead of putting it where we really need it. Sigh. "Democratic Socialism like in Norway or Denmark"? Socialism is when the government owns or controls the means of production. How many factories are owned or controlled by the governments of Norway or Denmark? NONE! In fact, Norway and Denmark score high on the Index of Economic Freedom. Back in 2016 when Bernie was debating Hillary, he said he wanted to make America socialist like they have in Denmark. The Prime Minister of Denmark immediately issued a press release denying that Denmark is socialist. Bob
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Post by debutante on Jul 22, 2019 15:05:11 GMT -5
Hi Fred: You want to try that again? "Communism is the goal of Socialism." -- Vladimir LeninI think that's a pretty clear statement. Just because history isn't adequately taught to a lot of people doesn't mean that the "roadmap" to communism isn't clearly identified. Cracking a book or two will expose the modus operandi to anyone willing to spend the time and receive an education. Any Republican will tell you that Paul Ryan definitely owns those two years. Don't ask what I think of the man, as I might be tempted to tell you. I consider RINOS to be worse than Democrats. So no, the Republicans don't "own that" -- RINOS "own it". Supposedly, Ryan retired to "spend time with his children." Then he goes and gets a job with the news services. TRANSLATION: "Q" said certain people were told to retire. Looks like Ryan was one of them, doesn't it? You can't be serious! Obama campaigned on "hope and change" -- NEVER ONCE identifying what he meant by that before he was elected. NOBODY would have voted for him had he stood up and said, "I want to FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA TO WEAKEN IT AND GIVE CONTROL OVER TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER." Duh! By the time the investigations are over, Obama is going to be lucky if he isn't hung after being convicted of treason by a military tribunal. Do not for one moment try to pretend that Obama was anything other than what he is! And let's not pretend he isn't into all that other weirdo stuff either. (See the photo? Isn't he just the pretty one? Ya think that's normal???) Obama was many things people didn't know about before he became president and as time goes on -- more and more is going to be revealed. The reason the Democrats and the mainstream media are so rabidly anti-Trump is because he is exposing Obama and all of his ilk for who they are -- and they would prefer that everyone remain ignorant so they can continue on with their crap. Trump will win in 2020 and by a landslide. --Debutante
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Post by faskew on Jul 23, 2019 8:08:47 GMT -5
Bob – There have been many, many definitions of socialism as it evolved over the last century and a half, and many varieties in action around the world. The “means of production” definition is 19th century and obsolete. In today’s economy, “means of production” can be a computer or cell phone. (There are lots of people who have become millionaires by posting YouTube videos or by writing computer code.) Consider what I think are socialist things in the US: government ownership of roads, schools, licensing agencies, power plants, broadcast airways, our GPS system, etc. So, to me, socialism is when the government owns lots of “stuff” – just about anything.
Consider when the US was first formed. What did the government own back then? Not much. Over the decades, our many layers of government have slowly added more and more “stuff”. If you look at all the stuff owned by a city, county, state, or the Feds, it’s amazing. (Cities, like Austin are hurt by the fact that there are so many buildings and properties in town owned by either government entities or non-profits and therefore pay no property taxes.)
Anyway, I consider the government owning all this “stuff” to be a form of socialism. But that’s just me. Government ownership, yes, but not necessarily of the means of production.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather the government owned the roads than all roads should be toll roads. Yes, the gov wastes lots of money, but my experience with private enterprise is that it wastes even more than the gov. I worked for both. Just personal experience, so not good proof, but it’s why I think the way I do.
The Nordic model of social democracy has heavily regulated free markets combined with governments that take care of their citizens. Austin has something like 2,000 homeless children living in the streets. Thousands stand on the streets and beg. People die because they can’t afford medical treatment. Drug addicts are sent to jail instead of to rehab. And so on. We have incompetent government and a vicious free market that is willing to kill or cripple its customers with flawed products in order to make an extra nickel for the next quarterly report (we get a food or product recall just about every week these days). The worst side of both systems. You don’t see things like this in social democratic Norway. That’s my kind of socialism.
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Post by faskew on Jul 23, 2019 8:47:23 GMT -5
Deb -
>"Communism is the goal of Socialism." ---Like I mentioned to Bob, definitions from 100 years ago aren’t valid these days. All the various economic systems have mutated beyond anything people of those days could have imagined. Current communist states, like China and Vietnam, are also major world economic players. Several non-communist nations are collapsing economically. Many nations are controlled by drug cartels that are essentially free markets with guns. And so on. The Nordic social democracy model has been in use for a long time now in several nations and those people have not drifted into communism and don’t seem to be headed that way at all.
>RINOs ---I know you don’t like RINOs, but which Republicans do you like? Me, I liked the old-style Republican Party, at least the reasonable, rational members. But the Tea Party Republicans took over after 2008 after Obama’s election, and then the Trump Republicans took over in 2016. I don’t like either of the new flavors, although some of the Tea Party ideas were pretty good. It’s that once they got power, they abandoned the good stuff. >The reason the Democrats and the mainstream media are so rabidly anti-Trump is because he is exposing Obama and all of his ilk for who they are. ---I haven’t noticed much in the way of Obama exposing. Can you give me a couple of specific things that Trump has revealed about Obama that no one knew before? I can’t think of anything at all. ---Anyway, I believe we can easily find 3 Republican scandals for every Dem scandal that has come up in the past 3 years or so. Trump likes to jolt his base with anti-Obama slurs now and then, but he also isn’t shy about taking credit for things that Obama did that Trump likes. It’s funny to hear him say that “we have done such and such for the first time!” when it’s something that Obama did several years ago. But the public is ignorant enough that they don’t know. Or don’t care. 8-<
---Dems have to be rabidly anti-Trump because that’s what the party out of power always does. We could fill several pages with rabidly anti-Obama stuff from the Reps. The mainstream media is anti-Trump because all news, left and right, is free market. They are mostly concerned with ratings, not truth, so they say what their customers want to hear. The majority of Americans don’t like Trump, so that’s the market the mainstream media goes for. Americans were not brainwashed by the media. They truly don’t like Trump. He tells lies daily, he stirs up trouble internationally for no particular reason, he kisses the asses of communist dictators while insulting America’s best allies, he changes his mind on positions every couple of days, leaving his staff racing to catch up and spin whatever nonsense he just spouted. He’s a very bad president, period.
---But what he is very, very good at is media manipulation. When something embarrassing comes up, he says or does something even wilder to divert attention from the thing he wants to hide. He dominates the news cycle, all channels, by saying or doing outrageous things that are good for ratings (right – pro, left – con). It’s the Trump reality show- backbiting, gossip, slander, confusion, and so on. Every day. He gets almost nothing done, but it’s difficult to see that among all the chaos and yelling.
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Post by debutante on Jul 23, 2019 15:24:43 GMT -5
Hi Fred:
No. You don't get to market "socialism" as a new brand. Did I ever tell you I did a brief stint in an advertising agency?
You have a product you want to sell with a bad reputation. So, the first thing you're trying to do is divorce it from any previous identical product by claiming it is somehow "new and improved".
Oh yeah? SPECIFICALLY what are these new and improved features? There aren't any. It's the same old product that's simply being repackaged. Having new faces pushing this product is no different than changing the color logo on a package and label.
I know the game. Convince the consumer that the product will change his life for the better, imply a performance level that won't necessarily be delivered -- but you're covered because such things are open to interpretation, and suggest the product is something everyone else is dying to own to appeal to the herding instinct.
The product itself is still worth shit -- but hey, if consumer doesn't find out until after they bought it, you know what they say --"caveat emptor."
No, thank you. I have the ability to learn vicariously and socialism/communism has led to extreme poverty and death in every society in which it was implimented.
There is no such thing as "new and improved" socialism. I half expect you to break out in a jingle and show me a film clip of beautiful bikini clad women accompanied by handsome muscle bound fellows frolicking on a beach....as the vision of this grand socialist utopia you're trying to hawk. It's what all the beautiful people want, after all! PUH-LEEZE!!!
What a lifetyle comrade! It's all FREE. You don't have to earn it! Life will be one big playtime! (Lead me to the vomitorium!)
Stop the commercial and let's get real.
Let's see the bread lines and the starving kids, the run down housing, the gulags, the executions, the lack of private rights -- all the glories of socialism/communism that leap off the pages of history books.
And that you can get for FREE in any library.
And better yet, it's all true! No false advertising!
--Debutante
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Post by debutante on Jul 23, 2019 15:39:02 GMT -5
Hi Fred:
Do you want me to list all 76 illegal acts Ted Cruz compiled? The site I found lists most of them, but requires a subscription to get to the last 20. It's footnoted though.
I found out stuff I didn't even know Obama did. If I search hard enough, maybe I can dig up the entire list. Do you want me to try, or will you settle for what's available without subscription?
Or should I just link you to his more publicized questionable acts which always benefited terrorists (I will warn you the authors of such material are less than flattering when discussing these topics).
However,$200,000+ spent in regard to the $16 bush is kind of an interesting tidbit though...Cruz has things that never hit mainstream media.
Aside from that there is "Q".
"Q" refers to POTUS as "Q+". There is a ton of expose material there as well on all kinds of topics.
--Debutante
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Post by faskew on Jul 24, 2019 8:06:19 GMT -5
>Let's see the bread lines and the starving kids, the run down housing, the gulags, the executions, the lack of private rights -- all the glories of socialism/communism that leap off the pages of history books. ---Hmmm...we can see the bread lines and the starving kids, the run down housing, and the lack of private rights in Chicago. Does that mean you guys are socialists?
---There's a huge difference between economic systems and political systems. I agree that communist nations were and are also dictatorships. But the democratic socialism of Europe of Europe doesn't have that problem. Bob says that those aren't really socialist nations because their governments don't own the means of production. But they call themselves socialists, as do right-wing Americans. The name doesn't really matter. They seem to have figured out a way to have the best of both worlds while we continue on with the worst of both worlds. In the US, the government doesn't own the means of production, the means of production (corporations) owns the government.
As to Ted's list of Obama's illegal acts, I suppose that depends on how you define things. To me ALL the presidents for many decades have been violating the Constitution with their executive orders, treaty making and breaking, etc. Doing things that only Congress should do. And then there are "signing statements", where the pres instead of vetoing a bill signs it, but adds footnotes that he will only enforce certain parts and will ignore others. Bush, Obama, Trump - they all have done it and it's (to me) illegal.
Anyway, I'd be happy to look at a partial list of Ted's. Although the question comes up - if Obama was doing so many illegal things, why didn't Congress do something about it after the Republicans took over? Beginning in 2010, Republicans gained more and more power every 2 years until they had complete control over everything in 2016. Yet they apparently allowed criminal activities to continue for years without trying to stop Obama? And after the Reps took control of the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016, they didn't haul Obama up for his crimes? Sound suspicious, don't you think? Of course, Trump vowed to prosecute Clinton, but never did because she didn't commit any actual crimes. May be the same thing with Obama.
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Post by debutante on Jul 24, 2019 9:12:04 GMT -5
Hi Fred:
Nah. Chicago just stinks because it's run by democrats.
Will talk to you later. Watching C-span.
It's like watching Elmer Fudd testify. Lol!
-- Debutante
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Post by faskew on Jul 25, 2019 7:39:19 GMT -5
Texas has been run by Republicans since the middle 1980's, and we have the highest no-health insurance rate, one of the highest mortality rates for births, one of the highest poverty rates, etc. Parts of Houston look exactly like the worst parts of Detroit. And so on. Of course, we also have Senator Ted. LOL
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Post by rmarks1 on Jul 26, 2019 0:04:08 GMT -5
Texas has been run by Republicans since the middle 1980's, and we have the highest no-health insurance rate, one of the highest mortality rates for births, one of the highest poverty rates, etc. Parts of Houston look exactly like the worst parts of Detroit. And so on. Of course, we also have Senator Ted. LOL
Yet people are moving into Texas and moving out of Chicago. Go Figure.
Bob
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Post by faskew on Jul 26, 2019 7:47:03 GMT -5
Yep. Maybe it's the mild winters, at least in the middle and southern parts. Could that be it? 8->
Yeah, there are lots of jobs, but mostly high-paying tech or minimum wage. Not much in between any more. At least in Austin. A recent article said that you need to make $37 per hour to afford to live in Austin. Even 2 minimum wage folk can't afford an apartment. Not sure how the working poor survive. Of course many (most?) of the tech jobs go to folk from India and China and there are some fantastic Hindu temples going up around the area. And White Nationalists trying to burn them. LOL
Anyway, right now Texas has very low unemployment, but part of that is because so many have given up after job hunting for years and now they don't show up on the job-hunting lists any more. Texas is a very bad place to be poor, or old, or sick. 8-<
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