Comrade Barack, a socialist? No… and too damn bad.
Thursday October 30th 2008, 10:50 am

(image: AFP)

The right-wing nutbaggery is cranked right up to redline over in the good old USSA, as Repuglicans are in full-tilt panic over Obama’s mighty lead, even in states Shrubya ‘carried‘ in 2004.

Despite Obama spending 20-odd years regularly attending a Christian church (albeit with an over-the-top flaming nutball preacher), the lunatic right are absolutely convinced that you can’t have ‘Hussein’ as a middle name unless your prayer mat is pointed at Mecca. While it’s plain and obvious that Obama is not a Muslim, I’m no happier that he professes to be a Christian.

Eligibility to be elected to the Presidency is limited by the Constitution to those who were born on US soil. Hardcore right wing loops are insisting that Obama can’t produce a US birth certificate, thus invalidating his candidacy. Fact is, Obama has produced a State of Hawaii birth certificate. But what about McC’s birthright eligibility? In fact, Micko was born in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936- the Canal Zone has never been recognised as US territory and neither have been US military installations. If anyone has any worries about birthright eligibility for the office, McC should be shaking in his boots.

The Fox/GOP strategy for the last week of the campaign is to accuse Obama of being a socialist on account of his tax plan to soak the rich. Americans by and large simply don’t know the difference between socialism and communism– most think they are one and the same. They’re not. Many equate socialism, an economic system, with the totalitarian and dictatorial governing nature of Stalinist regimes like China and the former USSR. Hit the books, folks. This is high school level political science. If you don’t understand this, you have only yourself to blame for being fooled- or you just rather like being fooled. Moreover, Barack’s policies are not socialist. He does not advocate state ownership of production facilities, only taxing more heavily those who can afford to pay more taxes.

I’ve now lived for more than 12 years in Australia, a decidedly socialistic democracy with high taxes on high earners and free healthcare for all. I’m still looking for the downside of ‘socialised medicine’ and a (nearly) sufficient safety net for unemployed, aged and disabled people.

The simple fact is that the only people who can possibly have any viable complaint about ‘redistribution of wealth’ are the very rich… and yet, here we have Micko trying to sell his ‘SOCIALIST!’ scare campaign to everyone, including the working poor and those who are unemployed, most without any access to healthcare. Hilariously (or is that ‘tragically’?), some po folk are actually getting sucked in.

Getting people to vote against their own interests is a great political trick if you can pull it off. Starting with Reagan’s ‘trickle down economics’ lies in 1980 which have been carried forward by Repuglicans since, millions of Americans are still waiting to get wet.

Unfettered American capitalism has come fully unstuck in the recent ‘credit crunch’ and stock market crash. Bush has now socialised the gambling losses of free marketeers, while their rampant greed has stretched the already huge income gap between CEOs and wage earners. Time to level the playing field.

I only wish that Obama was a real socialist.

-weez


5 Comments so far
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An ‘Idiot Wind’: John McCain’s latest attempt to link Barack Obama to extremism

Comment by weez 10.31.08 @ 7:48 pm

Hah yeah. I was chatting with some american kids on a game forum and interestingly the sentiment was “I *WISH* obama was a socialist!”. Imagine hearing that out of average slacker american kids in the 80s.

Times change…

Comment by Donno 11.01.08 @ 11:30 am

Average slacker kids in the 1980s owned blow dryers and aspired to be stockbrokers.

Yes indeed, times DO change. 🙂

Comment by weez 11.02.08 @ 7:26 am

Hey just so you just need to have both of your parents be a citizen in order to be a citizen of the US. Plus your right Obama is not a socialist, hes a fascist.

Comment by stfu 08.12.09 @ 9:01 am

False.

If born outside of the USA, the child is a US citizen even if only one parent is a US citizen (jus sanguinus). See Yale Law professor Jill Pryor’s notes.

If born on US soil (as was Obama, in Hawaii on 4 August 1961), the child will be a US citizen no matter what the citizenship country of the parents may be (jus soli). Barack Obama’s parents could have been Martians and he’d still be a ‘natural-born’ US citizen.

If you’re gonna bullshit about US nationality law, don’t try bullshitting a guy who already has two citizenships (US by birth, Australian by naturalisation) and qualifies for yet another (UK, by grandparents’ English/Welsh sanguinity), mkay?

And if you think Obama is a fascist, you don’t know WTF a fascist is.

Birfers are ignorant morons; thanks for proving it once again.

I wish you birfers would give up the ruse. You’re just average ordinary racists wrapping your racism in a pseudo-controversy to avoid being identified as average ordinary racists. You’re not happy that a black man rules your world but you don’t even have the balls to come out and say so. Cowards.

You’ve got 7.5 more years to stew in your own spew- get used to it.

Comment by weez 08.12.09 @ 8:05 pm



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