EDIT: Link in description is broken (part of it got cut off due to the letter limit). Here's the link: http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1937929,oprah-obama-christmas-121409.article

He's going easy on himself. I'd give him a D+ (hey, that's above average for an American president! ). Why? Here's a few reasons:

1.) He promised us healthcare, but then he compromised, and then he compromised again, and our current bill will place us in a worse position than we were in before (if that's even possible). From my understanding, the bill basically mandates that we buy insurance at an "affordable" price (note that the government has traditionally been very bad at determining what most people can afford). But get this - THERE'S NO PUBLIC OPTION!!! The private insurance companies are the ones in charge of this new system. Fox has it all backwards - the government isn't taking over the private sector, the private sector is taking over the government (not that that's anything new)!

2.) He still hasn't repealed DOMA or DADT. I mean seriously, DOMA might take some work to get through, but he could get rid of DADT just by signing a paper.

3.) He supports the Patriot Act. This alone would make him a terrible president in my view.

4.) I don't know much about what he's doing militarily, but according to one friend, he's "falling for the same 'surge' strategy that caused us to loose support of the locals in Vietnam." I think Bush also used the "surge" strategy in Iraq.



Bah. We need a communist president. And a socialist congress.
The democrats and republicans both must go (republicans first, though XD).

I wonder what America will be like when Palin (or some other republican) gets elected president. I'll have to put up with a republican congress for a year, at this rate, but I think I can get out of the country during the summer of 2011 .

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 14 2009, 7:28 pm by Jesusfreak.

The thing that upsets me most is.. he told us that he was going to start removing troops...
and now he is saying we have to finish what we started and sent another 30k troops

( He totally went the other way then what he promised us, didn't even fail. Just disregarded what he said and now is doing something different. )

...but wait, I thought...

Thought what?

(Note: I said communist president and socialist congress because traditionally, communism tends to work as a better motivating ideal than socialism, and the president doesn't really do much other than make promises and sign stuff the congress passes.)

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/193792 = broken link.

I thought the same, kame...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1235664/Barack-Obama-awards-solid-B-grade-year-office.html

Surveys find that 95% or more of Americans with highschool diplomas disagree.

I stopped believing in communism once I realized that I was probably going to make more than average as an adult, and that if I did I would deserve it.

Here is some good news for you:
1. Obama and the far left in congress is still committed to including provisions in the bill that can help put the United States on the road to single payer. An example of this is the lowering of the medicare age to 55. If the medicare age is lowered to 0, then we have single payer.
2. He does have a time table for an orderly troop withdrawal from the middle east.
3. He is certainly going to repeal DADT, it's just that there isn't any urgency, so he's waiting for the moment that will give him the most gain and least lost politically.

In light of that good news do you think you could at least give him a C-?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 14 2009, 6:55 pm by scwizard.

Gah, you're right.... hang on...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1937929,oprah-obama-christmas-121409.article
The letter limit cut part of the link off >_<.

I guess, although I'm not sure how true any of it is. Obama has explicitly stated (or so I've been told, I've never heard the man myself) that he is not either liberal or far-left, and that he would disappoint the vast majority of liberals.

Er, what's that supposed to mean? Are you saying that you realized that you wouldn't benefit from communism because you were able to make it to the bourgeiosie class?

Is this counting everyone with a high school diploma, or just those with a highschool diploma and nothing else?

Socialist places are terrible. They usually control the citizens by controlling all forms of information.
Communism is for lazy stupid people who cant get good jobs.

I think Obama is more of a C+ but any grade is better than Bush which I give a 0

My opinion comes down to this: if I develop good software I deserve higher pay than someone who develops bad software, and if I write software that allows one cashier to do the work of five cashiers, then I deserve higher pay than a cashier.

Even the republicans agree lol. They're generally like "you know he was a pretty lame president, BUT AT LEAST HE PROTECTED US FROM TERRORISTS"

You mean like how America does with it's mainstream media, particularly Fox News, with MSNBC coming in a distant second? They may not be controlled by the government, but Fox at least is controlled by the Republican party, which is controlled by the private sector, which is far worse than the government. I think you're getting "socialist" mixed up with "stalinist dictatorship" or "state capitalist" .

You are aware that the countries with the highest living standards in the world, specifically, Sweden and Norway, are socialist, right? (Coincidently, they also happen to be the most atheist, but that's another subject)
And you are also aware, yes, that America, by far the most capitalist nation in the western world, has a low living standards outside of it's middle-upper and upper classes, a reputation for being terribly uneducated, and that the US is much less free than the nations it constantly makes fun of for being "socialist" (freedom refering to everyone getting equal rights, for example, homosexuals being able to marry, groups of more than just one religion being able to buy billboard advertisements without people suing them, people being able to protest against wars without being legally labelled as "terrorists," etc?)?

Capitalism is for lazy people who got good jobs and wanted to take advantage of hardworking stupid people.
Socialism is for people who got fed up with capitalism but still wanted the private sector to exist.
Communism is for the next evolutionary step of human beings that are able to work together without trying to kill eachother.


Frankly, except for the last sentence, your entire post disappointed me. I know I haven't been to SEN in a while, but I remember you as being particularly intelligent =/.

No such thing! It's kill or be killed and always will be!

Seriously though, all I want to know is why you think my coworker who does half the work I do would get paid the same as I do

And you do. My understanding of communism is that people get paid by the value of their labor, whereas in capitalism, they get paid based off what their employer is willing to give them.
Also, when Marx is refering to the "abolition of private property," he specifically states that he means bourgeiosie property, that is, property obtained by profit and not labor. If you make something, it's yours.

Lol, not the republicans I've seen. They always try to blame the economic crash on Clinton, despite the fact that Bush was the one who started the costly wars, lowered the taxes, and refused to fix the housing economic bubble before it popped (er, actually, I think it may have been the democrats in congress who did that last one. If so, shame on them, I'm glad I'm a socialist and not a democrat O_O).

I don't think that. To be honest, I may be more of a socialist than a communist. Like I said earlier, I just wanted the communist president to be a figurehead for the people, while the socialist congress makes all the actual laws. Communists tend to make good speakers .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-declared_socialist_countries#Current

I do not see Norway or Sweden on this list.

Socialism is definitely not about equality in the social sense. Socialism is about everybody having equal wealth.

I agree with that. I would love to live under such a system.

Only one slight problem though. How the heck would the value of one's labor be determined? How would this sort of communism work in practice?

Not sure what to say to your list (other than that I know for a fact that many Americans consider Sweden to be socialist), but this is completely incorrect. Everybody having equal wealth is communism, which most people aren't ready for yet.

Not sure, to be honest. How is the value of one's labor determined now?

Communism is a branch of socialism. In communism it still carries the ideology of everybody having equal wealth that is found in Socialism.
I think the Americans you know are idiots and should major in Political geography.

Woa, if everyone got paid by the value of their labor (which you just told me would happen under communism) everyone would NOT have equal wealth. Not by a long shot.

Some labor is worth orders of magnitude more than other labor.

In my opinion, most forms of government are perfect, at least on paper, but when we put it into practice and add the human element of corruption and avarice, we can obviously see that they are far perfection.

I'm going to assume you're talking about how much one is paid under the current system.

If I were a huge conservative I'd be all like "it's determined by the wonderful magic of the free market, which provides opportunity for all etc"

However realistically, in irl, how much money you make is based on how much you can get away with making, no more and no less. This has nothing to do with our current system btw, and will always be true no matter what.

Take for instance communist Russia. Party leaders were far wealthier than common comrades. Why? Because they could get away with it.