He's got a great laugh.

I knew it all along. That's it, I'm voting McCain/Failin'.

Damn you, burdy. You keep stealing my videos while I'm out canvassing, and you're outta the family!

I'd share my embeds with you first, but I ain't no commie!

I think... yes... yes it is.

"It's Peanut butter jelly time!"

Try to define 'Communism' without describing America.

^ pathetically easy.

the foundation of communism is the abolition of private property.

anything more challenging you'd like us to explain?

^Agreed.

^just wanted to put that arrow thingy

if Obama isn't a socialist, what term would you use to describe his overall policies?

you're full of sh*t and you're committing fraud with every word that comes out of your mouth. you know you're lying, and you're full of lies. you have no moral backbone.

his biggest running point is universal, nationalized healthcare. that is socialism. if you are a socialist, or want to vote for a socialist, fine. but stop pretending you aren't and stop lying to the american public. you are immoral cowards who are afraid to directly support your own beliefs.

^Really? I could swear that his idea on healthcare was ACTUALLY that, if he could start from SCRATCH, he would like socialized health care, but that the current system requires too much of an overhaul to be converted to a single-payer (socialized) system. His policies sound a lot more like trying to make the CURRENT healthcare system affordable for everyone than they do like making healthcare the government's responsibility.

^do you have a google university sweatshirt? you know its not a real degree right.

@imstellar28 Yeah, universal healthcare, just like in Socialist Canada! Or rather... Mixed economy Canada... But still.

Snide comment aside, Barack isn't really socializing healthcare. I believe his plans were to root out inefficiencies in the current healthcare system, stimulate competition in the medical field, allow for people to purchase prescription medicine from overseas, and provide incentives for uncovered Americans to pick up a healthcare plan as the overall cost of health insurance has a tendency to drop as more people buy into that health insurance. If the healthcare becomes affordable enough that almost everyone can afford to buy into it, in effect it becomes universal. It is not, however, socialized.

An example of socializing healthcare would be for the government to ban all forms of health insurance besides the one put in place by the government itself and make participation in that form of health insurance mandatory, generally through the use of taxation. That is decidedly not what Barack is planning to do.

Originally, I had a question that I have been stuck on at work posted after the "^agreed" comment. Figuring my15minutes could have a crack at that one, cause it is driving me nuts.

Then, of course, imstellar28 had to crawl out from under his bridge and get his troll on.

That was a burn.

>> ^G-bar:
^just wanted to put that arrow thingy

I think the fundamental difference between the US and some other countries is just how health care is viewed. Is it a luxury? Or is it a right that everyone should have? If Obama is planning to introduce changes to the system that make it easy for all americans to have it, and not just those above a certain threshold who can afford it, I'd be behind it completely. Seriously, it isn't socialist that the police are tasked with protecting everyone and not just the wealthy, is it?

Free healthcare for all isn't socialism, it's called "sticking together". Where I live you pay the same amount for a strained knee, brain cancer e.t.c. , 30-40 dollars I think. No insurance needed, just being a citizen.

Jesus dislikes communism. That is why you should vote Republican.

Now.. lets talk about Heaven. Heaven is a Communist enclave for certain. Noone owns property. Everyone is provided for under a universal provider plan for ALL of their needs. Food is free. Shelter is free. Entertainment is free. FOREVER. Now.. if that isn't a Communist paradise. I DONT KNOW WHAT THE F#$K IS.

^why do you think i commit blasphemy at every possible turn? i have no interest in a communist heaven

socialism is just a word.

america is not a word, neither was the USSR, nor is Sweden. you're all arguing about a word ffs.

I guess Obama is trying to distance himself from the word because it was subverted by fucking idiots for 100 years.

I repeat... if you are not a socialist, what are you? Antisocialist?

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
That's it, I'm voting McCain/Failin'.


lmao 'McCain/Failin'

>> ^ElJardinero:
Free healthcare for all isn't socialism, it's called "sticking together". Where I live you pay the same amount for a strained knee, brain cancer e.t.c. , 30-40 dollars I think. No insurance needed, just being a citizen.


There's no such thing as a free lunch. Want to work for me for free? Didn't think so. Socialist health care is paid by taxes (nominal appropriations) and inflation (wage and savings value appropriations). Those are both forced methods of payment, there's no opting out.

Say, for example, your neighbor decides to smoke his whole life. He comes down with lung cancer and undergoes numerous operations, receives numerous drugs and therapy, all totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now let's take several people who paid the same amount into the system and got nothing because they never smoked. Those people effectively paid for his costs. A complete transfer of wealth, despite having no control over that person's personal decisions. Money that could have gone to a better home for themselves, another child for themselves, better food for themselves. Gone, given to the guy who smoked under the idealistic notion of coerced charity for the public good.

In fact, if everything were provided to you based on other people's money, why would you work at all? And if people don't work, where does the money come from? Now you now why the USSR fell and every other country who became too socialist. When you have an incentive model that says, no matter how hard you work, you're gauranteed the same share as the next guy, why excel? Or no matter how many risks you take with your health of your own volition, you will be subsidized by others who didn't. It completely perverts incentive.

In capitalism, on the other hand, where money is market determined (gold), and you have no central bank price fixing interest rates, and government is only funded to the extent that it protects rights and offers courts, people just... trade with one another with the effect of benefiting both parties. Two people acting in their own self-interest will make mutually beneficial trades even if they were only thinking of their own welfare.

>> ^MINK:
socialism is just a word.
america is not a word, neither was the USSR, nor is Sweden. you're all arguing about a word ffs.
I guess Obama is trying to distance himself from the word because it was subverted by fucking idiots for 100 years.
I repeat... if you are not a socialist, what are you? Antisocialist?


Socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism. Socialism is the percentage of capital controlled "communally" via the government. Capitalism is the percentage of capital controlled by its earner. We are probably 60% socialist at the moment, and it should be around 10%.

^I don't want to see you calling the fire department when your home catches fire, Señor rugged individualist.

^as of 2007, the government spent ~$300 billion on national defense, fire, police, and legal services. the average income is $50,000 a year. there are 300 million Americans. Thats an average of $1000 per person to cover that expense or 2% of the average income. You currently pay upwards of 60% in net taxes (40% even for the poorest people). Now imagine having 58% ($29,000 for the average american) extra each year with the exact same level of national defense, fire, police, and legal services you do today.

Nobody here is advocating anarchy.

downvote banshee for ignoring what i wrote and telling me the definition of a word.

imstellar if you believe in socialised national defence, fire, police, legal services, then we are in the same ballpark. as long as you regulate industry to guard against man's greedy instinct to fuck everybody else over (lend them money when they don't have a job, lies in advertising, monopolies, corruption etc).
then you only have one problem left, and for me it's a big one: The Arts. I cannot figure out a way that art can be compatible with capitalism. It doesn't work like that.

New World Order - Go live in the USSR. I will not live in the United Soviet Union of America.
Wake up people! Learn what Socialism is.. do you really want to Live in CUBA or Russia? for the next 4 years.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
^I don't want to see you calling the fire department when your home catches fire, Señor rugged individualist.


Can you not read or something? I want government funding to the extent that they're preventing the infringement of rights and offering recourse, not "directing industry" with forcibly appropriated money or providing services any more complex than laying pavement. Any fire could be arson, you need a fire department to protect private property. Full-blown state health care addressing self-inflicted conditions with other people's money is garbage.

Ever hear about the guy in Sweden with the brain tumor? The state didn't like his chances and declared it inoperable to save money. He flew to private facility and paid for the operation, and lived for many more years. How kind and wonderful socialist health care is.

Learn what Socialism is.. do you really want to Live in CUBA or Russia? for the next 4 years.

Surely not, but it's worth nothing that economic and political freedom are two completely different things and they don't even have elections in Cuba. And yes, economically, Cuba is even more socialist than we are. Just this year they ALLOWED their citizens to buy computers. People don't risk their lives fleeing to America on rafts and banana boats for nothing, they're trying to escape living life as just another lowest common denominator. They want the opportunity to live, not merely survive in a so-called socialist utopia. Unfortunately, they don't realize the hyperinflationary depression brought on by our socialist interventions they're now stepping into. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they might say.

downvote banshee for ignoring what i wrote and telling me the definition of a word.

Are you on drugs or something?!! I totally answered your question. If you aren't socialist, you're capitalist. The terms are a reference to where the majority of the capital is controlled, politicians or its earner. There is no other place for it to be. Just like if you're not feeling good, you're feeling bad. Not anti-good.

YES, THAT MEANS GEORGE BUSH AND NEO-CONS ARE SOCIALISTS, EVEN MORESO THAN CLINTON WHO ENJOYED POPULARITY UNDER THE FED-INDUCED TECH BUBBLE OF THE 90S. Instead of having that bubble burst on Bush's first term and making him a one-term president, he delayed a severe recession by having Greenspan artificially lower interest rates to 1% for an entire year. The inflationary effects of that filtered into real estate. Amazing revelation, here for you?

then you only have one problem left, and for me it's a big one: The Arts. I cannot figure out a way that art can be compatible with capitalism. It doesn't work like that.

It's the complete opposite, art is hurt by socialism. What funds advanced types of art and entertainment like video games and movies is the personal tastes of a private earner who has in his possession excess capital after buying things to merely survive. Socialism could try to provide for that, but tastes vary far too much for a central office to know the millions of places that the capital would have flowed to if it had been spent by its earner. Or even how much is appropriate to distribute to each person. Invariably, there will be people who don't care much about art and just want a bigger family. Do you then take from one person's art fund to finance the cost of those kids? That will gut the art fund very quickly. As will the corruption inherent in having capital controlled by someone who didn't earn it. And when your government is involved in banning computers and censoring speech, good luck with damn near anything.

>> ^MINK:
then you only have one problem left, and for me it's a big one: The Arts. I cannot figure out a way that art can be compatible with capitalism. It doesn't work like that.

Art is a product just like computers or anything else. If people demand art, people will supply it just as people supply computers (albeit not on an assembly line). Living is about surviving for animals, but thats not true for humans. Humans also require happiness, and a large part of that is art, music, entertainment, community, literature, etc. These will always be valuable, and thus in a position to command a price in a capitalistic system. If you look at art history over the last 200 years, you will find that many major museums of art stem from charity--not the government. Movies and music are art, and they are the most prevalent forms yet the government does not subsidize them at all. Why should paintings, sculptures, or other works be any different?

Many people create art in their free time, and it is both a hobby and second source of income. As long as humans are alive, there will be the desire to create--whether it is art, computers, or highways. You don't need a government to stimulate the arts anymore than you need the government to stimulate Microsoft.

Socialized health care sucks. When something is offered "for free" it's abused and then rationed. Quality and innovation suffer.

Sharing food is fine. A 3rd party with a gun taking your food and handing it over to someone you don't want to share it with is Obamanomics.

What if you're mother fixed you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and your teacher made you cut it in half and give it to another kid whose mother was not driven enough to give her son a sandwich with his lunch?

That is entirely different than sharing.

I think we should continue to offer tax breaks for "sharing." I'm ALL FOR social responsibility and sharing your wealth with those less fortunate. I don't agree with taking more from the "more fortunate" when we already have a progressive tax system that works.

I especially don't agree with punishing small businesses. They need all the help they can get.

Aw, c'mon guys. That's funny.

>> ^imstellar28:
^do you have a google university sweatshirt? you know its not a real degree right.

quoting imstellar: " Art is a product just like computers or anything else. "

WARNING! WARNING! FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT WITH THE ABOVE STATEMENT!

Next you'll be saying "your soul is a product just like cheese, in fact in a free market you should be able to sell your soul and get more cheese" or "love is just chemicals in your brain" or some other fucked up hyperrationality.