Well, actually he leans more Marxist than socialist...

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After Iowa

Happy New Year and congratulations on a job well done. These have been trying times when the hyenas of war have again been turned loose on humanity by a greedy ruling class.

Now, beyond all the optimism I was capable of mustering, Mr. Obama won Iowa! He won in a political arena 95 percent white. It was a resounding defeat for the manipulations of the ultra-right and their right-liberal fellow travelers. Also it was a hard lesson for liberals who underestimated the political fury of the masses in these troubled times.

Obama�s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary �mole,� not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.

The old pattern of politics as usual has been broken. It may not have happened as we expected it to happen but what matters is that it happened. The message is clear: we can and must defeat the ultra-right, by uniting the broadest possible coalition that will represent an overwhelming majority of the people in a new political dynamic. We must quickly shed yesterday�s political perspective and get in step with the march of events.

Frank Chapman (letter to Communist Party newspaper People�s Weekly World.)
Via e-mail

Snopes.com leans to the left

July 29th, 2008 � No Comments � General Politics, Politics

Like many others I have used Snopes.com to check things out and make sure what I am reading is actually true. I never really questioned them before, but then the other day I was reading an item on AL Gore and I began wondering to myself, why are they trying to justify why Gore said this.

I then started to look at other items and found the same thing. Even when accusations were found to be true about liberals, Snopes would try to either explain it away or defend the position. Unbeknown to me, this has already been well documented by others for items on the Clintons, John Kerry, Gore, and Barack Obama.

I did a little research and found that the site is run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, a couple from California. From all accounts I have read, they are Obama supporters, but then of course probably support other Democratic candidates as well.

Now I am not saying that Snopes.com is a completely useless site because they usually do a good job on hoax emails�especially outside of politics. But you should always read what they say with a critical eye and be wary when they don�t just give the facts and start to defend a position. If you see this I would suggest you check out other fact checking sites to collaborate what they say.

I can see a blind conservative thinking that perhaps Snopes is politically motivated toward the left. However, just for fun, I looked up the issue of Osama Bin Laden�s family being flown out of the U.S. immediately following the 9/11 attacks, when most air traffic had been grounded. Snopes says this, too, was false. Here, it quotes heavily from the 9/11 commission. Members of the Bin Laden family, the commission concludes, were not flown out before air space were re-opened.

But Snopes, via the 9/11 commission citations, does show that the Bin Ladens were flown out September 20th. The FBI questioned them, but then let them fly out. The commission also says one of the FBI agents who questioned the family was a pilot for the flight, though the vagueness of the report could lead one to conclude that the FBI agent was a pilot in general and not the pilot of the flight. Which begs the question, why mention it at all unless they meant that an FBI agent was the pilot flying the Bin Laden escape plane in question�

Anyway, the point of the whole Bin Ladens leaving the States is that they were allowed to leave so effortlessly and with our government�s help. It sounds great to say the government flew them out when all air traffic was grounded, but that�s just icing. That Snopes claims the rumor is false while the underlying point that the U.S. flew the Bin Ladens out of the States is true shows that Snopes is no more left-leaning than right-leaning. It�s admirable. They seem to take the tack that �if part of statement is false, the whole statement is false.� Very mathematical.

Ever heard of the progressive tax system...the one the US has ALWAYS had? That would be the same (regressive) tax system that redistributes wealth from top to bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#History_of_progressivity_in_federal_income_tax

Check out the table here to see the history of progressive tax structure in the US and notice how much MORE of a percentage of tax the top income brackets have paid in the past as compared to what Obama is proposing. Pay special attention to the prevailing rates between 1932 and 1981.

The vast majority of US economists (81%) support this tax structure. Before income tax was enacted, Theodore Roosevelt (McCain's hero) strongly advocated for progressive tax. McCain has made no mention of repealing or changing its basic structure. Your Marxist arguments about Obama's tax proposals are embarrassingly ill-informed, especially in view of the fact that Obama simply wants to restore the top bracket tax rate that was in effect in 2000 when Bush assumed office (39.6%). That is hardly excessive, in view of US history which informs us that in the past, it has been as high as a whopping 94% and that same bracket rate ranged between 63% and 94% for 49 years (1932 to 1981) of the 95 years we have been paying income tax.

By your logic, we are already a socialist country, and we have had 7 socialist republican presidents. NOT.

come forward claiming that Palin is "a believer". But I have seen some articles that she is not as for reform in politics as she wants us to think. When she was elected mayor it seems that she fired the police chief because he didn't support her in the election. Also, she had asked the librarian about censoring books. I have read conflicting stories on whether that librarian was fired or not, but both articles mentioned she wanted books taken out of the library. Palin claims it was just "rhetoric". She also left the town with a huge amount of debt, I believe $20 mill. when she her mayoral duties were done. She also supposedly hired some lobbyists.

Before I get bashed about Obama's same-ole, same-ole, I am not disputing that fact either.

So, let me get this straight. Obama is proposing a tax rebate funded by an oil company windfall profits tax. President Bush's economic stimulus checks were also tax rebates, but they were funded by tax payers. By the "logic" (and I use the term loosely) in your "all do respect" post below, wouldn't that qualify as redistribution of wealth and make Bush a black liberationist theological Marxist/Socialist? Please help me out with this.

The Bush redistribution of wealth is free market capitalism because it was funded by all of us, but Obama's similar policy scheme is black liberationist Marxist/Socialism because it redirects huge oil company profits back to the consumers who generate those profits for them in the first place? After all, we ALL pay for gas, too. So instead of energy cost relief for all of us, you think it is more appropriate for all that dough to be used to bankroll golden parachutes for oil company CEOs? If that's capitalism in its purest form, it sucks and I want no part of it. Sign me up for a little socialism. Maybe those black liberationist theologians are onto something after all.

Conservatives are currently attacking President Barack Obama by calling him a socialist. (Photo: Wired.com)

"We are all socialists now," proclaims Newsweek. We are creating "socialist republics" in the United States, says Mike Huckabee, adding, on reflection, that "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." We are witnessing the Obama-era phenomenon of "European socialism transplanted to Washington," says Newt Gingrich.

Well! Even as we all turn red, I've still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation's capital: Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. Bernie is quite capable of speaking for himself, so what follows is a report on the state of actual existing socialism from the other half of the D.C. Senators and Columnists Soviet.

First, as we survey the political landscape, what's striking is the absence of advocates of socialism, at least as the term was understood by those who carried that banner during the capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Then, socialists and communists both spoke of nationalizing all major industries and abolishing private markets and the wage system. Today, it's impossible to find a left-leaning party anywhere that has such demands or entertains such fantasies. (Not even Hugo Ch�vez - more an authoritarian populist than any kind of socialist - says such things.)

Within the confines of socialist history, this means that the perspective of Eduard Bernstein - the fin DE siecle German socialist who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless - has definitively prevailed. Within the confines of American history, this means that when New York's garment unions left the Socialist Party to endorse Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, they were charting the paradigmatic course for American socialists: into the Democratic Party to support not the abolition of capitalism but its regulation and democratization, and the creation of some areas of public life where the market does not rule.

But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they've wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world's highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations - but at least (phew!) we don't have socialized medicine.

Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports - the other three possible engines of growth - are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.

If Obama realizes his agenda, what emerges will be a more social, sustainable, competitive capitalism. His more intellectually honest and sentient conservative critics don't accuse him of Leninism but of making our form of capitalism more like Europe's. In fact, over the past quarter-century, Europe's capitalism became less regulated and more like ours, one reason Europe is tanking along with everyone else.

Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn't that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.

Judging by the failures of the great Wall Street investment houses and the worldwide crisis of commercial banks; the collapse of East Asian, German and American exports; the death rattle of the U.S. auto industry; the plunge of stock markets everywhere; the sickening rise in global joblessness; and the growing shakiness of governments in fledgling democracies that opened themselves to the world market - judging by all these, a more social capitalism is on the horizon because the deregulated capitalism of the past 30 years has blown itself up, taking much of the known world with it.

So, for conservatives searching for the culprits behind this transformation of capitalism: Despite our best efforts, it wasn't Bernie and it wasn't me. It was your own dam system.

HE'S A SOCIALIST, MUSLIM; WE WILL HAVE SOCIAL MEDICINE, ALL THE CHURCHES WILL BE CLOSED AND ALL CHRISTIANS WILL BE PERSECUTED. NO HOMESCHOOLING FOR SURE. OUR BORDERS WILL BE OPEN. YOU MUST HIRE HOMOSEXUALS IN YOUR CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES. REMEMBER WHAT HITLER DO, IT WILL BE MUCH, MUCH WORSE. ******