Socialism. flee for your lives

Man sues Pompano Beach nightclub
where pole dancer’s shoe flew off
hitting mirrored ceiling and him.

Run! Flee! Take to the hills! Hide in your closet or bomb shelter! Obama the socialist is coming! He’s going to (gasp) “spread the wealth around.” Leave it to the Republicans to panic at the mere suggestion of socialism. You might well think the world was coming to an end. Just what is it that Obama wants to do that is such a grave threat to our American way of greed. Let’s see, he wants to increase taxes on the few obscenely wealthy individuals and corporations so he can give tax breaks to the middle class (we already do this with our progressive income tax, he wants to do a bit more of it). He wants to provide universal health care (like all industrialized countries except ours, and we already have Medicaid and medicare, to say nothing of social security). He wants to help people afford to go to college without graduating 50 to 100 thousand dollars in debt (this is not a problem in most other industrialized countries and, of course, universal publicly funded elementary schools have long been in existence in America). McCain wants to deregulate the medical profession as we did the financial institutions (what a marvelous idea, we’ve seen what it did to our financial institutions and also what it did to the energy markets). Obama’s plan for health care for all still (unfortunately) involves the insurance companies and will not be a single payer system, which most everyone acknowledges would be more efficient and less expensive. McCain also wants to privatize social security (another really marvelous idea, especially at the moment). Republicans want us to believe that socialism is really communism and they always compare it to the Russia of Lenin and Stalin, to China, and Cuba. They never compare it to Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and other countries that practice forms of social democracy (and do very well by it). In fact, what Republicans in the U.S. believe in, is a primitive form of social Darwinism that most other “civilized” nations gave up long ago. It’s a dog eat dog world, let the poor starve, they don’t pay taxes, you get only what you pay for, the one with the most toys wins, it’s your own fault for being poor, consume, consume, consume, greed is good. Edward Hyam summed it up nicely: “Capitalism turns men into economic cannibals, and having done so, mistakes economic cannibalism for human nature.” Interestingly enough, most “uncivilized” peoples, being much more egalitarian, do not have this problem. Not all humans are by nature (or nurture) invariably greedy. Sharing is very common among them. Now that one (1) percent of the people in the U.S. control more wealth than the lowest 50 percent, and greed has run rampant for the past eight (or more) years, perhaps we can collectively come to our senses? Not if McCain and his Republican colleagues have anything to say about it. Their idea of socialism is to give more and more to those that have, and less and less to those who have not. It is long past time for them to go (and good riddance).

I have never been a fan of Colin Powell, especially since his disgraceful participation in bringing about the Iraq “war.” But I think he certainly got it right when he endorsed Obama and castigated McCain for his truly dirty campaign and pick of the hopelessly unqualified Sarah Palin as VP candidate. What I thought was even better, however, is when he made it clear there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America, and told us about the death of a Muslim soldier buried in Arlington cemetery. The MSM seem to have conveniently ignored this part of his endorsement. So as they would say in Ausralia, “good on ya” General Powell.

LKBIQ:
“When fanatics are in charge there is no end to oppression.”
H. L. Mencken

TILT (things I learned today):
Tasers do not work on wild boars.