NYcarbineer
Diamond Member
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I LOVE THIS QUOTE: The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money Margaret Thatcher.
Too bad she was full of shit.
Link?
Is the UK socialist? Is the EU socialist?
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I LOVE THIS QUOTE: The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money Margaret Thatcher.
Too bad she was full of shit.
Link?
Too bad she was full of shit.
Link?
Is the UK socialist? Is the EU socialist?
Wowie Zowie!!
Some large portion of Libs seem very very hypersensitive to being labeled Socialists.
That's because they don't believe they are. Nor do they see themselves as anything other than rational, sensible human beings far superior to the rest of us who they believe to be so very wrong and which they characterize in such distorted ways.
The observation didn't originate with me, but it has been noted that it is such people who most threaten the America that true patriots have come to know and love. The danger is not so much in the Prince of Fools they elect to office, but in the throng of fools who would elect such people to office.
Wowie Zowie!!
Some large portion of Libs seem very very hypersensitive to being labeled Socialists.
Link?
Is the UK socialist? Is the EU socialist?
Exactly....and who would know better than her?
Thank you for making my case, young man.
Link?
Is the UK socialist? Is the EU socialist?
Exactly....and who would know better than her?
Thank you for making my case, young man.
I doubt 10% of Americans could define socialism as something other than "just like communism! Commie Bastards!"
Is the UK socialist? Is the EU socialist?
Exactly....and who would know better than her?
Thank you for making my case, young man.
Is the UK bankrupt? Is the EU?
No.
Exactly....and who would know better than her?
Thank you for making my case, young man.
Is the UK bankrupt? Is the EU?
No.
Take a look at the tax structure in Europe, please don't forget the VAT, or the gas tax.
Please stay on topic Okay?
Yes, Thatcher does know about socialism, and she still stated what she did. go figure....
Is the UK bankrupt? Is the EU?
No.
Take a look at the tax structure in Europe, please don't forget the VAT, or the gas tax.
Please stay on topic Okay?
Yes, Thatcher does know about socialism, and she still stated what she did. go figure....
She was wrong. It was a stupid smart remark of the sort that conservatives enjoy. European socialism is working. In fact, the EU has a trade surplus with the U.S., so apparently their brand of socialism enables them to make more of what we want than we make of what they want.
I doubt 10% of Americans could define socialism as something other than "just like communism! Commie Bastards!"
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh#t out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy...
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
A WELSH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive...
You people don't have any idea what you're talking about. None whatsoever. You are the atypical uneducated American. No wonder your FF's established the Electoral College. You are really too stupid to decide on your own who should be in charge.
You people don't have any idea what you're talking about. None whatsoever. You are the atypical uneducated American. No wonder your FF's established the Electoral College. You are really too stupid to decide on your own who should be in charge.
This sentence doesn't even make walking around sense!
Take a look at the tax structure in Europe, please don't forget the VAT, or the gas tax.
Please stay on topic Okay?
Yes, Thatcher does know about socialism, and she still stated what she did. go figure....
She was wrong. It was a stupid smart remark of the sort that conservatives enjoy. European socialism is working. In fact, the EU has a trade surplus with the U.S., so apparently their brand of socialism enables them to make more of what we want than we make of what they want.
Your talking about socialism as a nation, and she was talking about socialism as to the citizen. As I stated, look at the fucking taxes that has been laid on them.....the rich are shrinking in those countries. I know you don't want to talk about it, and spin if you want. Like I said....stay on topic, and she wasn't wrong.
Exactly how Americans define "socialism" or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans' reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them -- an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.
61% of Liberals Favor Socialism
Maybe they should have given examples of socialism in order to clarify what it means...
Like,
-do you want to keep social security retirement as a program or eliminate it?
-Do you think unemployment insurance is a good measure for those losing their jobs?
-do you want to keep Medicare for the seniors or do you want to let them all try to fend for themselves when it comes to their own health?
-Do you want your government to keep up the roads and highways in your area?
-Do you want to eliminate school lunches for the poorest children among us?
Then maybe these idiots would have their answer to what socialism means to them...
guaranteed, there would be A LOT MORE republicans saying yes to 'socialism'.
From a specific issue standpoint defining whether this thing or that thing is "socialist" is highly subjective and always subject to a lot of debate. There is no purity of socialist ideology in practice today and there never really has been therefor the practical definition is going to vary widely depending on the circumstances and the point of view of the person being asked.
The fact of the matter is that any centralized government of scale has a tendency to become more authoritarian in terms of central economic planning (socialism is after all an ECONOMIC philosophy not a political one) as time goes by since those in power are after all human beings and as such gravitate toward that which secures and increases their power. Nothing works better toward the securing and consolidation of power than economic control and wealth redistribution (buying votes), this tendency was something the founding fathers anticipated and thus designed the Federal Government in the best way that they knew how to stifle it (Republican form of government, checks & balances, limited Federal Authority, etc..,).
That being said , your examples are all red herrings since each of your questions is prefaced by something that would make it appear that anybody answering in the affirmative is some sort of "scrooge" , when the fact of the matter is you do not appear to take into account that GOVERNMENT is not the only solution to the problems that the "programs" you point to attempt to solve, in fact history has shown that GOVERNMENT is more than likely the least efficient solution to them, or have you not caught on to the fact that thanks to all these half assed federal attempts at problem solving the country is now broke and on the verge of a banana republic AND the "problems" remained unresolved?
Let me remind you...the one social program that has put this country on the brink since it has passed is the Medicare Pill Bill...the Conservative/Republican....medicare pill bill passed by President Bush during his term....
the conservatives or republicans were in power for 12 years straight....WHAT did they do to eliminate these social programs that I mentioned above....
I have NEVER used the term "socialist" NOR DID THE ARTICLE....it used the term socialism, and all I did is show you guys what Democrats consider socialism, or "social" programs, and these are the things I mentioned, or at least some of them....thus trying to explain why the percentage is higher on Democrats than republicans.... The repubs have used an all out propaganda war on the term "socialism" for well over a decade....while never telling their constituents the definition of the term and what programs they are against.....
All I was doing is suggest to the op, that maybe they need to list the things I mentioned and even add the things Meister mentioned to a list and have the people vote yeah or nay to each of them, and we would have MORE republicans and democrats agreeing with eachother on each one of the measures than one would think, than with the half assed non descriptive pole that was done to divide us instead of unite us.
Care
You write as though you live in an echo chamber, happily accepting the slaps on the back from like minded folks.
Make the leap to a more adult venue: specifiy examples, use data, documentation, etc.
Don't be afraid of a more spirited debate.
For example, would you include the PIGS, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as "examples of healthy Socialist Democracies"?
And try to avoid such blather as "...pro-corporate oligarchy propaganda though, which frustrates them to no end." unless you can provide examples, as it is a waste of good electrons.
Your post could be more interesting for both sides- and for you as well.
Well, that would involve a definition of how "Socialist" you have to be to be a "Socialist Democracy".
As was my point, folks on the right try to paint socialism with a broad brush, like there's some black and white line that separates socialist states from capitalist states. This is simply not true.
In fact, most modern industrialized countries are more socialist than we are.
Since most right-wingers tend to call any left-leaning policies to be "Socialist" than one must assume that any nation that is more socialist than the US qualifies as being "Socialist".
So, based on that definition, I'd say that, for starters, a good portion of Europe is made up of "socialist democracies".
"...that general well-being of a nation's populace is the measure of a "beneficial" system,..."
Absolutely!
That is why I champion capitalism, and eschew socialism.
"In its modern beginnings, socialism was optimistic and well intentioned, without the overlay of its contemporary varieties that tend to bemoan prosperity, romanticize poverty, and promote a view that place individual rights are a secondary concern. This is to say that the earliest socialists sought the fullest possible flourishing of humanity, the common good.
Marxism rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism, that there would be but two classes: one small and rich, the other vast and increasingly impoverished, and revolution would be the anodyne that would result in the common good. But by the early 20th century, it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong! Under capitalism, the standard of living of all was improving: prices falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, lengthening of life spans, diets becoming more varied, the new jobs created in industry paid more than most could make in agriculture, housing improved, and middle class industrialists and business owners displaced nobility and gentry as heroes.
These economic advances continued throughout the period of the rise of socialist ideology. The poor didnt get poorer because the rich were getting richer (a familiar socialist refrain even today) as the socialists had predicted. Instead, the underlying reality was that capitalism had created the first societies in history in which living standards were rising in all sectors of society."
From a speech by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
Delivered at Hillsdale College, October 27, 2006
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2007&month=05
But again, this assumes the radical extreme case of Socialism, and also wrongly assumes that a partially socialist society, like those of modern day Europe will eventually devolve into complete Socialism. This is a fault of modern conservative American thinking, that every policy modification is black and white.
You guys have an "all or nothing" way of going about things. There are many shades of grey on issues like this.
Oh, and: "Euroideology"? LOL.
Love it. Nice word.
Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Edward R. Murrow, Ted Koppel, Andy Rooney, Leslie Stahl, George Stephanopoulos, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Ed Bradley, Campbell Brown, Jack Cafferty, Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer, Roger Grimsby, Soledad OBrien, Keith Olbermann, Cokie Roberts, Diane Sawyer, Bob Schieffer, Paula Zahn, Sam Donaldson, Brian Williams, Judy Woodruff, David Shuster, Bernard Shaw, Jessica Savitch, Harry Reasoner, Sally Quinn, Gwen Ifill, Douglas Kiker, Charles Kuralt, Roger Mudd, Robert MacNeil, Charles Osgood, Douglas Edwards, John Chancellor, Charles Gibson, Christiane Amanpour, Anderson Cooper, Ann Curry, Marvin Kalb, Bryant Gimbel, Andrea Mitchell, Jeanne Moos, Bill Schneider, Daniel Schoor, Richard Threlkeld, Jake Tapper, Ann Compton, Lester Holt, Michael Beschloss
All card-carrying liberals. So, which of them spread nasty notions about Democrats?
The left-wing media types gush over Leftist Pols, such as this one, where Beschloss tells all how smart President Obama is...but can't document any of it.
Here is Beschloss making a fool of himself of Imus show:
FREEDOM EDEN: Mike Beschloss, Don Imus, and Barack Obama's IQ
Here is Linda Douglas shilling for the Obama healthplan, and nailed by Howard Kurtz, CNN, as she lies about Obama and single payer, and supports snitching on Americans:
Chris Matthews expressed his latest over the top admiration for Obama's speaking skills as the MSNBC anchor admitted that Obama's speech created a "thrill" in his leg:
Read more:
And which of the following tow the right wing line:
NYTimes, LATime, Boston Globe, Washington Post.
Enough?
No, certainly not. The above are your opinion and there is no scientific basis in fact.
Which of the following tow the Right-wing line:
FoxNews, ALL OF TALK RADIO, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Post.
I find most actual network anchors, like many of the ones you mentioned to in fact be cautiously moderate. It's all about perception.
I could give you a nice long list of right-wing media personalities too, but I think you know who they are.