OT: US Pres election

[Atrocities]

This same argument about redistribution of the wealth, socialism, has been playing out for decades. Elements of socialism are vital to any democracy in that systems like Social Security are a needed to ensure the well being of those who can no longer work in the capitalistic economy. However absolute socialism, such as taking the wealth of others and spreading it around, has proven to be an abysmal failure in that it breeds laziness. Why should I work if my money is going to be taken from me and given to someone else? Why should I work if someone else's money is going to be taken and given to me?

Obama is a leftist. He is a full on socialist and just look to people for whom he has become linked. Look to his favorite authors, his own words, and his plan for America. When it comes right down to it, governments job is not to take away your property and give it to someone else. Governments job is represent the peoples wishes and provide for a united and uniform code of ethics and laws that govern our republic in democratic way. Of course democracy is two wolves and sheep discussing whats for dinner. In this case, after Obama's election, the liberals, the socialist of our nation, will have a super majority. And for the next two to four years we will all have to live with the good and the bad of it. The Liberals will have finally won and will take steps to consolidate their power by eliminating any voice that stands counter to their ideology. They will legislate away freedom of speech, the second amendment, and usher in new laws and restrictions that will forever change the landscape of America. I do not support this, and I will bet that 48% of Americans alive today will stand with me and vote against Obama and the change he represents. A Liberal Supermajority

{Edit}
In my opinion government is run best when the power is divided and both parties must work together. When one party controls all the power there are no checks and balances and corruption shall thrive and expand without restraint. I fear this and I suspect that is what the man who spoke to McCain mean when he said that he feared an Obama presidency. Fear that uncontrolled power is a kin to absolute power and we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[JimMorrison]

First, let me just say - Atrocities, you seem to be rather intelligent, and you put a lot of thought into this, so at heart I do believe you must be a good person. This despite how much we seem to disagree on matters of government and economy.

Originally Posted by Atrocities

Why should I work if my money is going to be taken from me and given to someone else?

This is a very good question. I'd like you to ask that question of a single mother, who is working 3 part-time, minimum wage jobs, killing herself to support her children who are just going to grow up to be criminals anyway, because the system puts her in a situation where she can't provide them with proper guidance.

As Aszelendor pointed out, Socialism is not Communism. Socialist policies do not take wealth from individuals, to distribute to other individuals. Socialist policies take assets away from the unscrupulous, to provide them to the populace as a whole in an equitable manner. We socialize aspects of our society not to impact wage disparities - but only to insure and guarantee the function of a community as a whole, and the well being and quality of life of our citizens.

While Communism has surely never succeeded (in large part because of the corrupt leaders who like controlling ALL of the wealth), Socialism, as is being demonstrated by Canada, and much of western Europe, is in fact rapidly creating sustainable economies, and standards of living that will soon surpass those of the good old US of A, if we keep letting greedy and immoral people profit immensely from (essentially withholding from many, through) overcharging for basic services.

I will use myself as an example for a moment. I am considered a very intelligent person, by those who know me. I am creative, and passionate, and a great team player or leader, whichever is needed. However, I have barely managed to make enough money to keep myself off the streets (my current cost of living is about $650/month) for the past 8 years now. Why? Because I lack health insurance, and what little medical attention that I have managed to afford, did not discover what is malfunctioning in my body, leaving me unable to reliably work, and therefore rendering me unsuitable for employment in most sectors of our badly stressed job market. There are many thousands of people in similar situations as mine, who would love to contribute more to society, but who are unable to, because of chronic health concerns - health concerns which would be addressed if we Socialized medicine in a way that results in more contribution, and less cost in the long run.

Understand (I'll say this again, since it may be easy to forget), I am not particularly fond of Obama. His appeal to me, is the fact that McCain is so distasteful. Bush and Cheney were about the worst thing to ever happen to our country, by nearly all quantifiable benchmarks, and McCain wants to keep doing the same, but "better" (read: worse).


Now, getting back your original statements about Communism, it is true that no one has ever gotten such a system to work as expressly intended. The goal of such a system of course, is to eliminate gross excess and greed to the point that if each individual got approximately an equal share of the pie, they would be happy with the task at hand, because they would have a good life.

Now, to build off of that, I am not a Communist. However, I do think that we are approaching a point in human development where we can very adequately balance the flow of wealth in a way that is fair to everyone. Note that fair does not mean "equal". However, when one person makes a few phone calls here and there to keep their profit machine rolling while they lounge by their private pool, whilst someone else works 60+ hours in miserable conditions just to keep their family alive, then something is not right with the system. I think that our economic system overlooks two things: that our money is not intrinsically linked to benefit or contribution (and in many ways, profit actually results from doing harm to others), and also that money = time = life. Thus, we need not only to acknowledge that society cannot function without waiters, and gas pumpers, and custodians - but we also need to re-engineer the system so that vast amounts of profit cannot be created through artificially creating demand by withholding needed goods and services from "less powerful" citizens.


I have more to say, and I will soon, but thank you for the practice.

<3

[Azselendor]

Aside from the video's comments, the text cards lack citations I do agree he needs to answer these clearly. As obama's connections to others are very legitimate questions in an election cycle. (why ayer's wasn't hung is beyond me). Just as William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team needs to disclose his lobbying actions on behalf of Saddam Hussain's government and former senator's Gramm's (McCain's economic advisor and personal friend) relationship with wall street and the deregulation of wall street. Specifically McCain and Gramm's part in repealing the Glass-Steagall Act - which, by the way, is what is ultimately responsible for allowing our banking system to implode.

The final bit of the video plays as a conspiracy theory. The part about acorn bullying banks on obama's behalf. Really? seriously? Come on now. Why would banks put up for 2 seconds with an organization whose greatest power is annoying the hell out of registered voters and the homeless? They'd call the police and their own security and have them thrown off in minutes.

And as others have said prior, Voter Registration Fraud is different from Voting Fraud.
The end result of this lipstick scandal will be a mass purge of the voter registrations. Sounds very jim-crowish to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp200...s/Oct18.html#2

by the way, I do recommend tracking the election with
http://www.electoral-vote.com (liberal slanted) or
http://www.electionprojection.com/ (conservative slanted)

Back to acorn. This organization is fundamentally flawed. They pay per registration. Hell, gimmie forms, a scanner, a wordprocessor and a phonebook database and everyone will be registered to vote for these guys: http://www.pot-party.com/

See, that's the problem with acorn. It's like giving a kid money to slap business flyers on windshields. What's to stop the kid from chucking the flyers in the garbage and collecting the money a few hours later? nothing. The good thing about voter registration fraud is that imaginary people don't show up to vote.

It also explains why the democrats register massive numbers of people each election and still wnd up being a few hundred short of winning. (looking at your Mr. Gore )

As for socialism. Not all socialism is bad. Public Education, Dept of Transportation and Social Security are a few examples of socialism are work. Without public education, we end up with a nation of dumbasses and morons.... Without roads, we can't move freely (a core unstated freedom of america. If you don't like where you are at, you are free to go somewhere else). Without social security, we end up seeing our grandparents work at walmart along side the morons from our crippled and partially dismanted public education system.

And mind you social security under John Mccain would end up in wallstreet. The same people that did a wonderful job with our home mortgages last week and a terrific job with our retirement savings.

[Azselendor]

LMFAO

refering to you first video, after a few minutes these two gems popped up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpwLdgTqlc0&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpwLdgTqlc0

[Atrocities]

A very good post Azselendor.

The part about acorn bullying banks on obama's behalf. Really? seriously? Come on now. Why would banks put up for 2 seconds with an organization whose greatest power is annoying the hell out of registered voters and the homeless?

I believe the answer to this was that the Banks were being sued and or threatened with lawsuits so they caved. I have seen a few "one sided" yet highly informative videos about it on Youtube, ABC, and Fox.

[thejeff]

I'm not going into the full fledged socialism debate, but I just wanted to comment on a two points in Atrocities anti-Obama diatribes.

First, on Joe the Plumber: It's a bit disingenuous to claim that "Those who ask question, like Joe the plumber are crucified by not only Obama himself" and "that average people who want to ask questions of Obama need to be vetted first?"
Joe asked his questions, got his answers, whether he liked them or not, and nobody had and problems with that. No one was crucified or even looked into until McCain brought him up again and again during the debate. Obviously no one needs to be vetted before asking questions, but if you're going to try to make someone into an iconic centerpiece of your debate strategy you should probably make sure they can stand a little scrutiny.

Second, claiming Obama is a socialist is just nonsense. Even by American standards he's a solid center-left politician. By European standards, where they actually have functioning socialist parties the whole Democratic party is barely left of center.
This gets thrown out about every Democratic presidential candidate. It's nonsense every time.

And thirdly, Acorn no longer pays by registration, if they ever did. They pay by the hour.
Heard about Mark Jacoby, working for the Republican National Committee, arrested for voter registration fraud? Apparently known for pulling the same scam in 2004?

[Edratman]

I am astonished by how successfully the Republicans/conservative movement has managed to convince so many working class citizens that their policy of enriching the wealthy is not only good for everyone, but also the ultimate expression of patriotism.

On the other hand, I have deemed them the "Hood Robin" party; steal from the poor and give to the rich.

[Atrocities]

First, on Joe the Plumber: It's a bit disingenuous to claim that "Those who ask question, like Joe the plumber are crucified by not only Obama himself" and "that average people who want to ask questions of Obama need to be vetted first?"
Joe asked his questions, got his answers, whether he liked them or not, and nobody had and problems with that. No one was crucified or even looked into until McCain brought him up again and again during the debate. Obviously no one needs to be vetted before asking questions, but if you're going to try to make someone into an iconic centerpiece of your debate strategy you should probably make sure they can stand a little scrutiny.

The guy only asked a question. Just a question. What Obama and his cronies did to the man is inexcusable. You cannot at any level expect a reasonable person who possesses any measure of commonsense to believe for a second that what Obama did to that man, regardless of McCain's use of his question or not, to be appropriate. Obama attacked him because Obama's own answer was being used to illuminate his real beliefs. This blaming the victim crap that the left enjoys using so much is really getting old.

Some of you guys are posting some incredibly good posts.

Second, claiming Obama is a socialist is just nonsense. Even by American standards he's a solid center-left politician. By European standards, where they actually have functioning socialist parties the whole Democratic party is barely left of center.
This gets thrown out about every Democratic presidential candidate. It's nonsense every time.

Really now, this is your answer and you're going to stick to it? Leftism ala liberalism, is directly linked to socialism because the left tend to be the party that chooses to employ socialistic ideals such as national health care for one. They believe that it is governments place to provide completely for the people. The left believe in a the ideals of a welfare state and that the power should lay with the government and not with the people. That is a fundamental tenant of socialism.

Obama's own campaign is modeled after the methods used by Linen and Stalin to over throw the Czar of Russia. They talked about how we needed change. In fact Change was the major theme of their entire revolution as it is with Obama's.

Oh ya, by Obama's own addition one of his favorite books was penned by Che Guevara, a committed far left socialist. The one thing he and Hillary had in common.

And thirdly, Acorn no longer pays by registration, if they ever did. They pay by the hour.
Heard about Mark Jacoby, working for the Republican National Committee, arrested for voter registration fraud? Apparently known for pulling the same scam in 2004?

So by your logic all because some guy broke the law in 2004, its ok for ACORN to do the same? ACORN wouldn't be under federal investigation if they were an honest group of innocent community organizers. Again I go back to the commonsense heart of things. Oh by the way, since the offices of ACORN in Nevada were raided, Obama conceded Nevada.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Atrocities

Oh ya, by Obama's own addition one of his favorite books was penned by Che Guevara, a committed far left socialist. The one thing he and Hillary had in common.

Che was actually more of a Populist than a Socialist. He saw the indigenous peoples' needs and rights being completely cast aside as insignificant in comparison to the needs and rights of the city dwellers (most of whom were not full-blooded natives). He fought for those people whose entire civilization and culture had been paved over in the name of progress. If you've never really looked into his life, he was really a rather fascinating and compelling persona.

Regarding Socialism, I need to try to clarify this a bit again, as your preconception seems to be a bit confused. Socialism does not remove power from the people, and give it to the government. Socialism removes power only from the senselessly wealthy, and by investing that power into public control, is actually giving it back to the people. So in the example of health care, rather than it being a corporate-for-profit industry that ultimately becomes this monster of money that only cares about numbers, it would (hopefully) develop into an effective tool for enriching the lives of the people. Granted, it's not a magic bullet, and it takes work and planning to make Socialized Medicine work as intended - but if you look at the reality of our current situation, I think you would be hard pressed to extrapolate how it could (even if poorly implemented) really end up less efficient than the broken system that we have in place already.

And finally, regarding "Joe the Plumber". Joe's entire conundrum was fallacious. As a working man, his taxes would go down under Obama. If he managed to put his plan into action to enter management, and take on other contractors, then his taxes would only increase if his revenues exceeded 250k. I think it's fairly ridiculous to assume that the math would not be balanced out in a way so as to allow "Joe" (or anyone else) to develop their business beyond that threshold. It is entirely unreasonable to try to portray this plan as having such a steep curve, as to make it utterly impossible to have a profitable small business larger than 250k/year - and Obama himself has stated that he plans to implement tax credits (for everyone, but with small business in mind) for employing American citizens inside of our borders.


I see a lot more Obama bashing, than any kind of illustration of McCain's superior plans for the nation. Ironic, as it mirrors McCain's own platform - "John McCain, because he's just not as bad as Barack Obama.".


McCain has only one trait that I look for in a leader - he doesn't panic when he's put on the spot. That doesn't really in any way compensate for all of his shortcomings.....

[Atrocities]

A well spoken post Jim,

I'm Voting Democrat

The issue with Obama's tax plan is that while he says he is going to lower taxes on those who earn less than 250k, in reality his plan will increase their taxes by 10 fold over any benefit his tax plan would provide in that he intends to raise taxes on everything from electricity to social security. Sure your income taxes could be lowered, but in the end your capital gains taxes are going to go up. So while you save a couple hundred a year in income tax, when you sell your house, car, property, inherent something, etc, you're going to pay taxes through the nose. His plan will raise taxes from the registering your car to the tax on a bottle of water. From taxing plastic bags to increasing your property taxes. He plans on raising the corporate tax which in turn will cost jobs and force more companies to look outside of the USA for their needs. And I also should point out that every Democrat that has ran on a promise to cut taxes has in the end reneged upon that promise and actually raised taxes.

A super liberal majority of power, congress, the media, and Obama will effectively remove any measure of checks and balances from our government. This means that any law that they wish to pass will get passed. From oppressing first amendment rights to the out and out right dismantling of the second amendment. These facts are not in dispute, they are a reality. A reality that scares the hell out of me because they won't stop with taking our rights away, they will go further by passing laws that will make them more powerful and less likely to be tossed from power. That is something that we as American's cannot allow.

Power should never be horded by one side, it should be shared by all sides so that no one party is denied their rights.

I have no problem with people who want change, I just don't want that change to abrogate my rights under the constitution. For me, this is the crux of it. I cannot support Obama because he voted against our right to defend our families in our own homes without the fear of prosecution or lawsuits. When a person cannot defend their family in their own home from harm or death without the fear of being sent to prison because the used a firearm, or fear of being sued by the very criminal who attacked them, then we no longer live in a society that values an individuals rights. The police are not obligated to protect us as proven by a Florida case. You do not make a person safer by making them defenseless. Obama not only opposes our right to safety in the home, but has vowed to reduce our military, close foreign bases, stop military research, (research that ironically led to the Internet, gps, cellphones, etc), all in the name of making America more world friendly. You do not make a nation safe by making it defenseless. You don't sit down with the enemy and ask them to be nice. All that does is make you weak in their eyes and emboldens them to become even more ruthless. (A lesson we learned through Clinton's politics.)

Ask yourself one question, do we as a nation want to secure our future at the expense of our freedom and safety, or do we want to secure our future without scarifying those fundamental American values that so many of our greatest have fallen to protect?

Obama is a good man, but he is a dangerous man. With a super liberal majority in congress, a willing pro-liberal controlled media, and a proven far left leaning Obama in office, we won't see an awakening of a prosperous future, but rather one that will usher in the end of one.

If my words offend people well then, sick the Obama machine on me. I am sure that I, an average American, deserve to have my entire life investigated and made public for daring to say NO to Obama and his liberalism. Mitigate my comments with rude personal attacks, defile my good name, and offer up liberal talking points to counter my statements. In the end what I say or believe really doesn't matter for Obama is going to win by a horrendous landslide and even though years from now, when we look back at my diatribes and say damn that dude was right on the money, it still won't matter because I'll either be dead, disappeared, or in jail for having dared expressed them in the first place.