[The Highlander]

I don't care that Sarah Palin is female, are inexperienced. I DO care that she is the same sort of religious extremist as Bush, and look at the trouble he's caused.

But fortunately I've got Alex Salmond!

[cpbell0033944]

I don't care that Sarah Palin is female, are inexperienced. I DO care that she is the same sort of religious extremist as Bush, and look at the trouble he's caused.

But fortunately I've got Alex Salmond!

Must confess that, being a sassenach, I'm not very aware of the exact nature of Mr Salmond's policies.  I do like his rhetoric, though. 8)

[David C. Matthews]

Oh yeah, Ayers donated the political equivalent of pocket money to Obama's campaign for re-election to the Illinois senate, a;long with lots and lots of other people.  If anyone is a terrorist sympathiser, it's the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Chicago, bcause he's been a respected Professor there for years.  Go there and demonstrate if you're so upset about Ayers.

That Ayers donated money to Obama's campaign is the least of their associations (which are just now coming to light via the mainstream "news" media).  Ayers may not be a bomb-thrower anymore, but he still hates America with a white-hot passion.  Factor in Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright (over twenty years and BO never heard Wright preach "God damn America!" or any of his other despicable statements???), Michael Pfleger, and others, and it's obvious that Obama is entirely too comfortable in the company of folks who (to put it politely) don't have this country's best interests at heart.  (In his first(!) autoboigraphy, Dreams From My Father, Obama baldly states that, in college, still looking for an "identity", he specifically sought out as friends student radicals and Marxist professors.  And I have not heard him repudiate those associations or the political views he learned from them.)

Look, I'l do a deal with you.  I intend staying here for the next 4 years.  If Obama becomes President, I'll return to this topic in 4 years' time.  If the US has become a Marxist state, with official press and state TV only, people disappearing in the night for criticising the regime, and sectret police on every corner, then I'll beg for forgiveness and agree with anything you say on politics.  If, however, this doesn't happen, and all this scare stuff ends up being just scare stuff, then you have to apologise to me. 

As for me, you've got a deal.  And please believe me, I hope I am the one apologizing to you.  Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

[Lingster]

cpbell:

I challenge you here and now to state that the Mayor is a terrorist sympathiser.

So I take it you're not terribly familiar with the Daley family of Chicago.

[cpbell0033944]

That Ayers donated money to Obama's campaign is the least of their associations (which are just now coming to light via the mainstream "news" media).  Ayers may not be a bomb-thrower anymore, but he still hates America with a white-hot passion.  Factor in Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright (over twenty years and BO never heard Wright preach "God damn America!" or any of his other despicable statements???), Michael Pfleger, and others, and it's obvious that Obama is entirely too comfortable in the company of folks who (to put it politely) don't have this country's best interests at heart.  (In his first(!) autoboigraphy, Dreams From My Father, Obama baldly states that, in college, still looking for an "identity", he specifically sought out as friends student radicals and Marxist professors.  And I have not heard him repudiate those associations or the political views he learned from them.)

As for me, you've got a deal.  And please believe me, I hope I am the one apologizing to you.  Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

What's amusing is that most of the New Labour hierarchy of the last 11 years, including the current Prime Minister, dabbled in Socialism at University and during their early political careers.  Charles Clarke, Former Education Secretary, and MP for the constituency neighbouring mine, was a leftiest leader of the National Union of Students.  Yet, many of these same men are now reckoned to have become almost right-of-centre in middle age. My pointy being that people's views change, and that, if you disallowed any politician who once dablled in Socialism, the UK would be nigh-on leaderless.  The House of Commons would be half-empty.  Yet the UK is not a Marxist state – a Conservative revival has taken-place, with their leader, David Cameron, almost a shoo-in for PM at the next General Election.

Thanks, though, for your words on my rather cheeky suggestion about four years' time. 8)

[cpbell0033944]

cpbell:
So I take it you're not terribly familiar with the Daley family of Chicago.

Nope.  But I can see where this is going.  Marxists, I presume? ::)

[alex]

Some Americans don't seem to have a clue what communism and socialism is.  They seem to have an irrational fear of anything being funded or regulated by the government, like the country is going to become a communist dictatorship in a few years if they're not careful.  Pffft!

Seriously. Here in Brazil, our current president used to be a bigger communist then any of these so-called radical Americans marxists.  Some people were scared shitless of what would happen if he ever got elected president.  Some said he would nationalize a whole bunch of companies, that he would alienate the whole international community and would perform ultra-radical social reforms…

Pfft…when he actually got elected, none of those things happened.  He actually became one of the best behaved presidents ever.

No president has the power to to change a country like the US into anything close to a social-democracy (like in the most developed countries in the world) let alone into a communist nation.  The simple notion that someone is afraid of that is too ridiculous to mention.

I don't know if Obama has socialistic tendencies or not, but I hope he does.  America needs to turn away from this pure-capitalism crap.  Having the government regulate and finance some parts of education and health, is no different then having it finance and regulate police and the judicial system. It DOES NOT make a country a communist one or even a social-democracy.  It just makes it like all the other developed nations on the face of the earth.

[cpbell0033944]

Well alex, you've just alienated a lot of people here, including your near-namesake AlexG. 

I do agree, however, on the central points.  Maybe a definition of socialist in the sense of a socialist state is what is needed here.  I always think of what many trade Unionists tried to make the UK in the 1970s.  Strikes were going-on almost continuously, many of them wildcat strikes (i.e. not planned by the hierarchy of the Union but just spontaneous) and often included flying pickets and violence for anyone who crossed the picket line.  Ricky Tomlinson (best-known as Jim in The Royle Family was jailed for such offences.  Even if Obama gets in (and I don't think he will), he'd have to have almost as much Communist zeal as Stalin to cause such a shift in US thinking, culture and politics.  How come no previous Democrat President has already done this?

[Mimi]

[font=times new roman]~Mimi[/size”>[/font]

[alex]

Well alex, you've just alienated a lot of people here, including your near-namesake AlexG. 

I do agree, however, on the central points.  Maybe a definition of socialist in the sense of a socialist state is what is needed here.  I always think of what many trade Unionists tried to make the UK in the 1970s.  Strikes were going-on almost continuously, many of them wildcat strikes (i.e. not planned by the hierarchy of the Union but just spontaneous) and often included flying pickets and violence for anyone who crossed the picket line.  Ricky Tomlinson (best-known as Jim in The Royle Family was jailed for such offences.  Even if Obama gets in (and I don't think he will), he'd have to have almost as much Communist zeal as Stalin to cause such a shift in US thinking, culture and politics.  How come no previous Democrat President has already done this?

Well CP, sorry about that.  But it really annoys me to no end the level of intolerance that has been imbued into the American people towards anything related to "Social" and "Public" that leads them to automatically associate them with communism, loss of freedom, evil dictatorships, etc… 

During the 60's and the 70's, such paranoia had it's reason. It was a different time, and there real  pressure for marxism and socialism in all parts of the world, by student bodies and labor parties. But that was almost 40 years ago!  The world moved on, and such ideas have died already. And so should this whole paranoia. 

[Author]

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