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Author Topic:   Democrat or Socialist...What's the Difference?
jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 8466
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 31, 2015 10:53 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
A question the head of the Democrat National Committee....COULDN'T ANSWER.

The answer is...there's no difference but the head of the DNC couldn't spill the beans that our demoscat comrades ARE SOCIALISTS.

Tongue-tied DNC chief suffers meltdown on MSNBC
'What is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist?'

The chairwoman of the Democratic Party has ducked a question from MSNBC about the difference between a socialist and a Democrat.

The awkward moment on live TV happened when MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews asked Debbie Wasserman Schultz about the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist who is running for president as a Democrat.

He’s been surging up the polls recently, even as the numbers for presumptive Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton have faltered.

“What is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist?” asks Matthews.

In the end, Wasserman Schultz is unwilling to offer an answer, only saying that the bigger issue is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.

Matthews asked, “Do you want to see Bernie Sanders speak at the Democrat National Convention? Do you want to have him up there as a socialist representing the Democrat Party?

“Bernie Sanders has been a good Democrat. He caucuses with the Democrats. Of course he should speak,” she said.

When Matthews presses about whether the speech should be in prime time or when nobody is listening, she waffles.

“I don’t know what time he should speak,” she said. “The progressive populist message that he has that resonates deeply and widely with the American people, not just with Democrats, absolutely should be featured,” she aid.

Matthews then leaves her struggling for words.

“What is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist. I used to think there was a big difference. What do you think it is?”

Wasserman Schultz laughs nervously. Then she moves on to “uhm.”

“The difference between … the real question is what’s the difference between being a Democrat and being a Republican,”,” she finally explains.

And she sticks to her response.

“You’re the chairman of the Democrat Party,” Matthews pressed. “Tell me the difference between you and a socialist.”

“The relevant debate that we’ll be having over the course of this campaign is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican,” she insisted.

See the exchange:
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/tongue-tied-dnc-chief-suffers-meltdown-on-msnbc/

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Catalina
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Posts: 3447
From: shamballa
Registered: Aug 2013

posted August 01, 2015 02:29 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
As usual what you want to see is what you get. Here is another take on the same spot
http://egbertowillies.com/2015/07/31/dnc-chair-didnt-allow-chris-matthews-to-bait-her-into-bernie-sanders-democratic-socialist-false-narrative-video/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_so urce=facebook_page&utm_medium=EgbertoWillies.com&utm_content=DNC%20Chair%20didn't%20allow%20Chris%20Matthews%20to%20bait%20her%20into%20Bernie%20Sanders%20Democratic%20Socialist%20 false%20narrative%20(VIDEO)

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 8466
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted August 01, 2015 03:47 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Only problem with the jack-as$es at daily kos take on that exchange....

Bernie Sanders IS A SOCIALIST and so are 68 other congressional members in the congressional progressive caucus

That's not to say there are no other Socialists in congress who are not members of the congressional progressive caucus.

Oh, and did you see their cute little theme songs?

"When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there'll be no more lootin' when we start shootin' that Wall Street throng. …"

Also:

"Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We'll kill you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie."

Some of us have been waiting a long time for these Socialist bast@rds to work up the courage to start their little armed revolution.

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Catalina
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From: shamballa
Registered: Aug 2013

posted August 01, 2015 04:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Whose theme songs jwhop? Do cite...

In the meantime I just posted that to show how differently the same thing looks depending on point of view. So I could care less what you think of KOS ..

But I have a hard time getting worried about how Sanders has been pretending to be a Democratic Socialist all these years and hiding his true EVIL RED nature waiting for this moment. Give yourself a break before your hyperactive commie filter knocks you off.

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Catalina
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From: shamballa
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posted August 01, 2015 11:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Here you go jwhop...enjoy. Note that it attributes the "calendrical blue moon" of modernity to Liberal influence.
http://liberaldarkness.com/2015/08/01/obama-performs-illuminati-blue-moon-ritual-to-cast-world-into-1000-years-of-satanic-darkness/

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 8466
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted August 03, 2015 10:29 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Attempting deflection from the issue will do you no good.

Sanders is a Socialist, a radical 60's hippie
moron. The fact Sanders is getting traction among leftist loons just shows how far left the current crop of loony-tunes leftist demoscats really are.

That said, I'm not at all surprised you're in constant defense of another Socialist as you do defend all things...Socialist.

August 3, 2015
Debbie Wasserman Schultz still can't explain the difference between a socialist and a Democrat
Thomas Lifson

After embarrassing herself a few days ago by being dumbfounded when MSNBC host Chris Matthews asked her to explain the difference between a Democrat and a socialist, the chair the Democratic National Committee had plenty of time to think about an answer. Yet, when Chuck Todd asked her the same question and played back her embarrassing response to Matthews, once again she avoided an answer, instead deflecting her comments to the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Watch the exchange: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/08/debbie_wasserman_schultz_emstillem_cant_explain_the_difference_between_a_socialist_and_a_democrat.html

The obvious conclusion is that there is no difference between a Democrat and a socialist. DWS obviously realizes that to draw a distinction would alienate a substantial portion of her party’s base.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/08/debbie_wasserman_schultz_emstillem_cant_explain_the_difference_between_a_socialist_and_a_democrat.html

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Catalina
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From: shamballa
Registered: Aug 2013

posted August 03, 2015 01:00 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Lol. You still dont get it do you? I'm not defending anyone. I just find it hysterical (and pathetic) that you are still stuck in the fifties commie conspiracy theory. The piece I posted is no more ridiculous ..and the Kos piece is no more or less right about Schultz than your mean spirited blowhards.

As to Sanders, is his endorsement of Single payer any more Commie than Trump's? How about their equal support of Womens right to their own health choices/childbearing decisions? Similar opinions of our illustrious "free trade" pacts?

Sanders is actually pulling support from Republicans at this point. People who listen to ideas not slogans and branding campaigns. Oh dear what will you do if he moves into the White House? Call him inexperienced? Muslim? Pretend he hasn't won every election he's ever run?

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 8466
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
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posted August 03, 2015 01:37 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
You try so hard to avoid the truth don't you.

Bernie Sanders is not merely a Socialist. Sanders is a Marxist...just like your little Marxist Messiah, O'Bomber.

Sanders has a long, long, long history of spouting Marxist drivel.

You are forever defending Marxists, Communists, Socialist Progressives...all basically the very same things. It's all drivel..ALL a hoax designed for unintelligent, incompetent, inept troglodytes to avoid actual work and tell everyone else what to do. Sanders isn't going to make it to the White House. Neither is the Socialist Hillary.

He's not actually democratic or socialist, either
Bernie Sanders is a Communist and an Ignoramus
Matthew Vadum
July 15, 2015

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been getting away for years with describing himself as a socialist, when in reality he is an outright America-hating communist.

This belief in communism is reflected in the Sanders platform. Even a brief glance reveals his plan to be hopelessly utopian and insane. It will extinguish freedom and shutter businesses and cause widespread suffering especially among the poor people he claims to want to help. It is a program for exporting the best and the brightest to places that appreciate them.

But identifying Sanders as a communist can be a risky proposition in modern-day America. The Left so dominates American culture that the word communist itself has become jarring, not because communism is bad but instead because leftists believe communism is good.

Left-wingers are students of George Orwell. They understand that language can be used for good or ill; to advance truth or mask it. To undercut the power that that emotionally charged word communism and its variants once had in this country when used by patriots to attack the nation’s foreign and domestic enemies, the Left over time reversed its polarity. Over and over and over again in the culture, leftists drove home the false notion that communists were boogeymen invented by those who wished to control the population through fear. Another way of putting it is to say that the Left marginalized its own word in order to protect the profoundly antisocial idea it represents.

When many Americans hear the word communist today, their initial inclination is to believe that there may be something wrong with the speaker, as opposed to the person being described. As Ann Coulter wrote in her book, Treason, “In a stunning demonstration of the power of propaganda, accusing someone of having been a Communist makes you the nut.”

Sanders, like so many of his comrades on the Left, is committing a kind of fraud. It is time for this con man from Vermont, whose ignorance seems boundless at times, to be called out on it.

But first, some background on Bernie, as he prefers to be called, is in order.

Sanders is on record endorsing plenty of dumb ideas. He wrote in the 1970s that the country was close to experiencing a nuclear apocalypse or “death by poison gas.” He claimed cervical cancer was caused by women not experiencing enough orgasms.

To people like Bernie, the economy is a plaything, a living entity that can be made subservient to government

Like the anti-capitalist, anti-American magazine Adbusters, which gave birth to the ultra-violent small-c communist Occupy Wall Street movement, Sanders is opposed to economic growth if it increases economic inequality, at present the number one bugaboo of the Left. When he launched his campaign in May, this economic illiterate blamed the abundance of consumer goods for child hunger. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants when children are hungry in this country,” Sanders said.

He said he wants a “revolution” to reverse what he calls a “massive transfer of wealth” over the last generation from the middle class to the rich. He wants the U.S. to restore the confiscatory 90 percent personal income tax rate for top earners from the 1950s.

“What I think is obscene, and what frightens me is, again, when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 [percent]. Does anybody think that is the kind of economy this country should have?”

To people like Bernie, the economy is a plaything, a living entity that can be made subservient to government. Operating on the same assumption, communist countries created bureaucratically administered “command economies” and millions of their subjects starved. The Soviet Union, which was supposed to live forever, disintegrated after just 74 years and all but a few communist countries followed it into the dustbin of history. Nazi Germany’s command economy didn’t save it either; the “Thousand Year Reich” perished after just 12 years.

Bernie’s first lie is that he is democratic. He specifically describes himself as a “democratic socialist,” as if the word democratic somehow makes his belief in socialism more noble. Left-wingers like Sanders play word games, misusing the word democratic deliberately and constantly. If they win, it is a triumph of democracy. If they lose, democracy has been betrayed, greedy capitalists rigged the election, the system is broken, and so on.

And the “democratic” Left won’t take no for an answer. Its activists try to implement their proposals by any means available, regardless of the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. When leftists lost in California’s Proposition 8 election, the referendum affirming traditional, opposite-sex marriage, they challenged the results in court and publicly hounded those who had donated money in support of keeping marriage an exclusively heterosexual, binary institution. Eventually they prevailed.

Dramatic losses by congressional and state-level Democrats haven’t weakened President Obama’s resolve to preserve his command-and-control government health care scheme; in fact, the historic losses only emboldened him to unconstitutionally change the health care law repeatedly by executive fiat. Eventually he prevailed (or so it appears for now).

Even though the name of the Washington, D.C. football team, the Redskins, is not offensive to the overwhelming majority of native Indians and is not unpopular with Americans generally, the “democratic” Left is pressing on. These fanatical activists don’t seem to understand that the names of sports teams are intended to present a positive image. When those teams are named after a specific social group, it is intended to honor that group. That’s why professional sports leagues have been populated by teams such as the Vikings, Celtics, and Nordiques, and not by teams with names such as the Rapists, Idiots, and Boors. Yet leftists continually call for boycotts and now the Obama administration is telling the Redskins it won’t allow them to move from the Washington, D.C. suburbs to Washington proper unless the name is changed.

Sanders has words other than democratic in his tool box.

He takes the standard left-wing euphemism for government spending, “investment,” and goes a step further. The senator characterizes what he considers to be inadequate levels of government “investment” in a particular policy area as “deficits.” Is this redefinition of deficits imbecilic or diabolically clever? The jury is still out.

As ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Bernie released a report in January titled “We Must Rebuild the Disappearing Middle Class.” In order to cut the so-called deficits he cares about, it will be necessary for the government to spend trillions of dollars more, for starters. In the report he states:

While we must continue to focus on the federal deficit, we must also be aware that there are other deficits in our society that have been causing horrendous pain for the vast majority of the American people. These are deficits in jobs, deficits in infrastructure, deficits in income, deficits in equality, deficits in retirement security, deficits in education, and deficits in trade. [...] At a time when this country has an obscene level of income and wealth inequality, we need a budget that ends the outrageous loopholes that exist and asks the wealthiest people and largest corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. At a time when real unemployment remains much too high, we need a budget that creates millions of decent paying jobs. At a time when our infrastructure is collapsing, we need a budget that rebuilds our crumbling roads, bridges, dams, levees, water systems, waste water plants, airports, and rail systems.

In other words, American consumers are spending their money on the wrong things, businesses aren’t meeting the real needs of the people, and the government, which is controlled by the big bad corporations, isn’t doing what Sanders thinks should be done.

Government, Bernie maintains, must drastically increase its expenditures on, well, everything. Because government spending shrinks economic activity overall, Sanders’s ideas, if implemented, would not help this allegedly disappearing middle class: they would disappear the middle class.

Bernie’s affection for a pie-in-the-sky theory popularized by Karl Marx remains undiminished

As the great economist Milton Friedman explained, the government obtains the money it wants to spend in just three ways: taxing, borrowing, or creating new money. Taxing and borrowing subtract from the economy by canceling out the stimulative effects of the spending. Creating new money might boost economic activity to an extent but it feeds inflation, and if done on a large scale, leads to disastrous hyper-inflation, with its attendant images of wheelbarrows full of nearly worthless cash. Ever-expanding government, no matter how it generates the money it claims to need, ultimately leads to ruin.

Bernie’s preferred method of generating revenue for the government is taxation. Boosting taxes beyond perhaps an optimal level, hurts the economy. Although pessimists say it may already be too late for the country, adding trillions of dollars to the nation’s umpteen-trillion-dollar debt will certainly doom future generations of Americans. The U.S. will be unable to repay the national debt no matter how high it raises taxes and when creditors lose their patience will be forced to inflate its way out or simply default. It is difficult to envision the United States surviving as a nation when its government eventually collides with economic reality.

But facts such as the horrendous track record of communist countries are not obstacles to the Left, so Bernie’s affection for a pie-in-the-sky theory popularized by Karl Marx remains undiminished.

To demonstrate that Sanders is a communist and not merely socialist, it is necessary to reflect on what these words mean. Many have said that a communist is a socialist in a hurry. That is one way of looking at it but it doesn’t answer the question of what communism actually is.

Communism is a political movement whose adherents believe that markets are fundamentally unjust and that revolutionary violence should be used to overthrow the existing order and attain a classless society.

Karl Marx thought of socialism as a necessary way station on the road to the supposed utopia of communism. The question of socialism versus communism is a never-ending debate in academic circles, and it is one that is too involved to get into here. Suffice it to say that socialists and communists all want government or the collective to be master. They all subscribe to bad, un-American ideas, are all in the same ideological camp, and all tend to believe that the ends justify the means. In ideological terms, there is no bright line or safe harbor that neatly separates socialism from communism. They overlap and blend into each other.

Communism, according to Marx, was a kind of heaven on earth and he was its foremost proselytizer. He argued that human beings could be changed and made to reject their natural, selfish, family-oriented impulses. When this happened, everything would supposedly change for the better. People would voluntarily work hard for a society filled with abundance so there would be no need for governments, taxes, armies, police, courts, and jails. In such a society the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” would prevail.

But before this (impossible) idealized condition can be achieved, there has to be socialism. The working class, according to Marx’s theory, disgusted by the supposed evils of capitalism and the misery they feel it inflicts on them, transforms the capitalist nation in which workers are mercilessly exploited, into a socialist state. Under socialism, in theory the “means of production”—factories, raw materials, machines, the labor force and the system by which it is organized—are controlled by the people through a powerful government. The “relations of production,” that is, the relationship between those who invest in and control industries and those who work in those industries is forever changed. The government steps in on behalf of the people and imposes what some call “economic democracy,” theoretically giving workers control over their workplaces.

Obviously, someone who works for socialism is a socialist; someone who works for communism is a communist. (Someone who joins a political party that advocates communism is a Communist with a capital-C. Someone like Bill Ayers who believes in communism but hasn’t joined a party is a small-c communist.)

Bernie Sanders has been working for socialism, the transitional stage of society before communism

Throughout his life, Bernie Sanders has been working for socialism, the transitional stage of society before communism. He calls himself a socialist, specifically a “democratic socialist.”

While Sanders has made a mountain of campaign promises that are socialistic in nature, the words he uses betray that his end-goal is actually communism.

In the speech that kicked off his presidential campaign in May, Sanders embraced the communist idea that markets are not just bad for people but are fundamentally unjust.

In an address heavy on class warfare, envy, and hatred, he declared that financial inequality “is immoral, it is bad economics, it is unsustainable.” This is tantamount to saying that the only just society is one in which everyone has the same amount of money or that anyone who has the ability to make a lot of money is an enemy of the people.

He promised to send “a message to the billionaire class.”

“[Y]ou can’t have huge tax breaks [for the rich] while children in this country go hungry,” he said, or “while there are massive unmet needs on every corner ... Your greed has got to end ... You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities.”

Sanders described the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, as a “modest” step towards forcing the U.S. to “join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right.” (Not surprisingly, the Constitution of the Soviet Union also treated health care as a basic right.)

“And we must do it through a Medicare-for-all, single payer health plan,” the senator said.

Obamacare, as former left-wing radical David Horowitz has said, lays the groundwork for a single-payer system which is communism.

What is Obamacare? And single payer? Why do we call it single payer? It’s communism. If the government controls your access to health care which is what this is about, as to what you can have and to what you can’t have, how is that different from—that is communism.

Throughout the congressional debate, Obamacare backers worked strenuously to convince their fellow left-wingers that Obamacare was a stepping stone to single-payer health care.

On the campaign trail in March 2007, then-Sen. Obama made it clear he wanted the government to impose a communist-style one-size-fits-all health care system on Americans. “My commitment is to make sure that we have universal healthcare for all Americans by the end of my first term as president.” He added:

I would hope that we could set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process.

And that’s exactly what Obama and congressional Democrats did in 2010 when they brought in Obamacare. Obama accepted the wealth-redistributing socialist half-measure that is the Affordable Care Act because he knows that it is destined to collapse, at which point he is gambling the American people will demand a single-payer system, the kind of thing desired by the people who raised him, including Communist Party USA operative Frank Marshall Davis.

Bernie has been around communists a long time.

He used to work at the communist-led United Packinghouse Workers Union.

In the 1970s he belonged to the anti-war Liberty Union Party (LUP). Under the LUP banner, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and governor of Vermont. His platform called for all U.S. banks to be nationalized, public ownership of all utilities, and the establishment of a worker-controlled federal government.

Sanders quit the LUP in 1979 and was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. During his decade in office he displayed a Soviet flag in his mayoral office and claimed he did so to honor Yaroslavl, Burlington’s sister city in the U.S.S.R. In addition, he made Puerto Cabezas in Communist Nicaragua another sister city of Burlington.

In 1989 Sanders addressed the national conference of the U.S. Peace Council, a Communist Party USA front group. The event focused on how to “end the Cold War” and “fund human needs.” Fellow speakers included radicals such as Leslie Cagan and U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)

Interacting with the CPUSA was a dangerous thing. During the Cold War, CPUSA members swore an oath “to the Soviet Union, to a ‘Soviet America,’ and to the ‘triumph of Soviet power in the United States,” according to Professor Paul Kengor.

In the 1990s, Sanders repeatedly introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to cut the nation’s intelligence budget. He reasoned that “the Soviet Union no longer exists,” and that concerns such as “massive unemployment,” “low wages,” “homelessness,” “hungry children,” and “the collapse of our educational system” represented “maybe a stronger danger [than foreign terrorists] for our national security.”

Sanders hopped on the global warming/climate change bandwagon years ago, claiming that it both threatens “the fate of the entire planet” and is caused primarily by human industrial activity. He wants carbon emissions strictly limited, which would inflict tremendous damage on the U.S. economy without having much of an impact on global temperatures. In 2010 Sanders smeared climate-change skeptics by comparing them to people who had ignored the Nazi threat before World War II. He accused “big business” of being “willing to destroy the planet for short-term profits,” and in 2013 pontificated that “global warming is a far more serious problem than al-Qaeda.”

For an American politician during the Cold War, Sanders was unusually friendly to the Soviet Union

Not surprisingly, Sanders is a strong supporter of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmentalists and big labor that wants the government to take over America’s energy industry. The group is a hotbed of subversives and other radicals. Former green jobs czar Van Jones who described himself as a “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist” was a member of its board.

Weatherman co-founder and former Weather Underground leader Jeff Jones (apparently no relation to Van), who was a fugitive for 11 years, is director of the Apollo Alliance’s New York state affiliate. Jones is proud of his small-c communist, terrorist past. In 2004 he boasted, “To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to try to do.”

For an American politician during the Cold War, Sanders was unusually friendly to the Soviet Union.

As Accuracy in Media has reported, in the 1980s he “collaborated with Soviet and East German ‘peace committees’” whose objective was “to stop President Reagan’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.” Indeed, he “openly joined the Soviets’ ‘nuclear freeze’ campaign to undercut Reagan’s military build-up.”

Bernie also reached out to Soviet allies. He travelled to Communist Cuba in the 1980s where he enjoyed a friendly meeting with Havana’s mayor.

In 1985 he visited Nicaragua to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the ascent to power of Daniel Ortega and his Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government. Sanders wrote an open letter to the people of Nicaragua attacking the Reagan administration, which he claimed was a puppet of corporate interests, for its anti-Communist activities. “In the long run, I am certain that you will win, and that your heroic revolution against the Somoza dictatorship will be maintained and strengthened,” he said.

When he was stateside again, Sanders sent a letter to the White House saying Ortega was interested in meeting with President Reagan to try to negotiate and end to that nation’s civil war. Sanders invited Ortega to visit Burlington but the dictator declined.

In the event Vermont’s favorite communist moves into the White House on January 20, 2017, it seems likely Ortega will at long last accept his comrade’s invitation to the U.S.

At that time Bernie Sanders and Daniel Ortega will dance on America’s grave.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/73748

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Sibyl
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posted November 30, 2015 11:25 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Sibyl     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
What's wrong with being a socialist?

Most Europeans today would be considered social democratic.

Socialdemocratic politics and Socialism in general is not the same as Communism, far from it.

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Catalina
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posted November 30, 2015 08:29 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Exactly, Sibyl.

Here's some history on those pie-in-the-sky ideas Sanders has been working with over decades.

It seems that he was right on the money about where the "smart" topheavy policies were heading. .even Greenspan was "shocked" to realize the Conservative Pie he'd been selling was the one in the sky. Care to see more of Sanders' predictions come true anyone?
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/28/1453742/-5-Times-Bernie-Sanders-Foresaw-The-Future?detail=facebook

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Randall
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posted December 01, 2015 02:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
What's wrong with being a Socialist? Nothing--if you are one.

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Catalina
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posted December 01, 2015 06:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Did you go to public school Randall? Going on a grant now? Would yOu prefer haVing to pay a fee every time you need a policeman or fireman? Prefer people dying in the streets to public assistance? Think prisons should be profit machines that use citizens as fodder?

Socialism has many shades and degrees and even meanings. Attorneys need to be very specific...and it doesn't hurt in real life either.

Most of the programs Sanders is talking about were available until the privateers started appropriating them. .

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deepseastar
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posted December 02, 2015 01:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for deepseastar     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by jwhop:
Bernie Sanders IS A SOCIALIST and so are 68 other congressional members in the congressional progressive caucus

As an actual socialist, I can tell you that the vast majority of leftists would find this claim absolutely laughable. It's the Democrats who are indistinguishable from the Republicans - they all defend the same neoliberal and imperialist interests...

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Randall
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posted December 02, 2015 03:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I do pay a fee. It's called taxes.

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Catalina
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posted December 02, 2015 08:51 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Catalina     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I meant every time you want their help..and i reckon you knew that. ... The tax makes that unnecessary(and much cheaper) because everyone pays it...

Meanwhile...Muslim or Christian. What's the difference?
http://aattp.org/christian-beheads-roommate-because-he-was-practicing- witchcraft-religious-right-silent/

Perhaps Trump will advocate for killing Christian families too? As if..

I blame the fracking chemicals in Oklahoma water. .and the incessant earthquakes

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Sibyl
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posted January 14, 2016 03:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Sibyl     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I once asked Ralph Nader if he's a socialist. He didn't answer.

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juniperb
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Posts: 9284
From: Blue Star Kachina
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 15, 2016 01:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for juniperb     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That`s a bummer

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Partial truth~the seeds of wisdom~can be found in many places...The seeds of wisdom are contained in all scriptures ever written… especially in art, music, and poetry and, above all, in Nature.

Linda Goodman

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peony
Knowflake

Posts: 1037
From: U.S.
Registered: Dec 2014

posted February 09, 2016 12:04 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for peony     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Good question.

Socialism calls for basic foundations of human life to be provided for by the government. It does not do away with free markets, private business, or our freedoms.

Democratic socialism is socialism that is voted for by citizens at the ballot box. We already have democratic socialism in the U.S.:

Medicare
Social Security
Military
National parks
Libraries
Prisons
System of Justice
Public transportation
Toilet waste disposal
Garbage collection
Firefighters
Police
Roads and highways
Border protection

Here's a three-minute video on socialism and democratic socialism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh9vM7v4pu0&feature=youtu.be

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aquaguy91
Moderator

Posts: 11905
From: Wankety Wankerson
Registered: Jan 2012

posted February 23, 2016 08:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for aquaguy91     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The problem with people who rail against socialism is they don't realize that socialism has evolved. It's the same when they claim "oh, republicans aren't racist! Abraham Lincoln was a republican". I challenge anyone who believes socialism is evil to talk to people in Germany, Canada, or Denmark. People from those countries will tell you that they love the systems they have and actually laugh at Americans for being opposed to it.

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Harpyr
Newflake

Posts: 12
From: Alaska
Registered: Jun 2010

posted March 12, 2016 01:37 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Boy I can't wait to come back here and read jwhop's reactions to President Sanders in a few short months. One of the first times I got to read a big time pinko commie rant from him was waaaaaay back in the early 2000's after I protested the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami and brought my story here to share. This will be a victory a long time coming.

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Harpyr
Newflake

Posts: 12
From: Alaska
Registered: Jun 2010

posted March 12, 2016 01:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I couldn't resist. JWOP- I dug up this reply that you asked for from me back in 2003 when we were debating bombing Iraq. I wonder if you still vociferously defend that decision or if you have come to realize, along with the vast majority of Americans that it was utter folly to have started this mess that we are still mired down in, in the first place.

Here's my 2003 reply to your commie rant in case you missed it then.
Some of my stats are out of date. They've only gotten worse in the 13 years since I wrote this to you.
posted February 17, 2003 04:34 AM http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/000002-2.html

Jwop:

quote:

.. how can people who are not communists themselves fall in with communists and promote their aims, which is the destruction of representative government everywhere?
....you don't see any fraud or irony in the communists being behind a peace and compassion movement? These are the people who put up walls to keep their citizens in, who have systematically killed 200 million of their own citizens in the Soviet Union, China, North Viet Nam and North Korea just for disagreeing with their government. North Korea is in the process of starving their citizens to death, more than a million so far and China, imprisons or executes their citizens who disagree or attempt to practice their religious beliefs.


OMGoddess..I almost can't believe some people actually still have such a knee jerk reaction like this to the thought of communism. I don't even know where to begin..First of all..those in the peace movement come from a wide range of political leanings..capitalists, socialists, communists, anarchists. Secondly, those 'communist' regimes you mentioned were more along the lines of facist dictatorships. I don't think a single country in history has ever pulled off communism in it's truest sense..they've all become corrupt..Not unlike democracy in America ..Do you think we (U.S.) have a representative government??..
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
You, my friend, are unfortunately in the majority who people that thinks America is a democracy. It was supposed to be..however, You are BEING LIED TO. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Democracy.. I LOVE America. I HATE our corrupt government. They are lying, thieving, greedy elitists. They are all RICH and really only interested in forwarding the interests of the ruling elite. One thing we could do to get things back on track is to not allow politicians to accept donations from corporations, in fact..corporations need to have their citizenship revoked..a corporation is NOT A PERSON and should not have the same rights individuals do. That is what has led to much corruption. (Mussolini said that fascism could better be described as corporatism because it is the perfect melding of corporate and state interests.)Also I think our government should truly be representative of THE PEOPLE. As in, they should not be all so stinkin rich.
Here's a few juicy factoids for you..

By 1998, the richest 1% had as much combined income as the poorest 100 million Americans.
Top 1/5 of households have 49.2% of total national income while the bottom 1/5 gets by one only 3.6%
From 1979 to 1997, the take home income for the top 1%, adjusted for inflation, rose 157% or $414,000. For the middle fifth, a 10% gain ($3,400)and the bottom fifth remained stagnant.
The three richest people in the world have wealth equal to the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations. (year 2000 figures)
Worldwide, the richest 20% of the population consumes 80% of the resources while the poorest 20% survive on 1.4%.
OH and if you think the 'American Dream' is a reality, there are some facts that might refute that thought.. We don't generally move around the classes too much..People born poor generally stay poor and the rich don't usually let outsiders in.
Another fact:


In 1865, the African American population owned 0.5% of the nation's net worth. By 1990, that figure was up to 1%.

Like I said, we don't move between the ranks much. The American Dream is the carrot dangling in front of our noses to keep the machine rollin. If people knew the full truth they would call for change. Just because I have a problem with capitalism, doesn't make me a communist. I am all for freedom but only as long as it doesn't damage our world in the process. Capitalism is based on the theory of INFINITE growth. Unfortunetly we live in a world of FINITE resources. It's high time we wake up to that fact before we can't repair the damage we've caused. We need to use the boundless source of human creativity to envision an entirely new system for a new era.
Those with their eyes open need to shake everyone else awake (terrorist and capitalist alike- yes I'm making that association for a reason) to the reality that we have but one planet and this is a global community. Stop dehumanizing those who are different than us. WE are all HUMAN and right now we are all in peril from our own shortsightedness. You can bomb the world to pieces but you CAN'T bomb the world to Peace.

quote:

I have to say weird, from my perspective, you're either a communist or an idiot.

To bring this back to astrology in a moment.... Have you read Carl Jung's theory of the shadow self? The people we feel hatred of are really only reflections of our own inner characteristics that play major roles in our daily lives yet we have no conscious recognition of. Those we villify are simply mirrors to our own darkest demons we have yet to wrestle with. Jwhop, you sound like someone with alot of anger towards certain groups of people...
The only way we can evolve spiritually (which is really the only option for humanity..Many people need a crash course in enlightenment..some more than others. The revolution to a better world will not take place on a battlefield but rather on the terrain of consciousness..Uranus is moving into Pisces soon so maybe there is hope yet..) and stop dehumanizing is to look inward to ourselves wrestle with our inner shadows. Astrology is a great tool for figuring out our shadow self.. Ever have nightmares of a dark figure or some sort of adversary? That's your shadow. Learn from it and evolve.
As for how we should deal with threats? I'm not Christian but there are some eternal truths to be found in the Bible.
"If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20

__________________________________________ End flashback_____________________________________________

I've been waiting a long time for Bernie Sanders to run for President and I'm working my tail off to get him elected and you should brace yourself, jwhop. Our next President is a Democratic Socialist. The Democrats are returning to their roots- FINALLY.

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teasel
Knowflake

Posts: 7917
From:
Registered: Apr 2009

posted March 12, 2016 04:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for teasel     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
You probably don't remember me Harpyr, but just last night, I was looking for a post that I think you wrote about a peaceful protest you were at (where I think the police attacked the protesters, even though they weren't doing anything wrong).

I'm voting for Sanders on Tuesday, here in Ohio.

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teasel
Knowflake

Posts: 7917
From:
Registered: Apr 2009

posted March 12, 2016 04:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for teasel     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Harpyr:
Boy I can't wait to come back here and read jwhop's reactions to President Sanders in a few short months. One of the first times I got to read a big time pinko commie rant from him was waaaaaay back in the early 2000's after I protested the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami and brought my story here to share. This will be a victory a long time coming.

I think this is what I was looking for. I couldn't find it - only references to it later on (from around 2005/2006).

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Harpyr
Newflake

Posts: 12
From: Alaska
Registered: Jun 2010

posted March 12, 2016 05:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Hi teasel! I do remember you. <3 Yes Miami in 03 was amazing. I saw first hand the iron fist of the Establishment squashing peaceful dissent to their corporate globalist policies designed to drain the middle class of their wealth and then the media spinning their lies to make us look like the violent ones. It was eye opening and I will never see the world the same again after hearing the anchors lie so blatantly about evens I witnessed personally.

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Harpyr
Newflake

Posts: 12
From: Alaska
Registered: Jun 2010

posted March 12, 2016 05:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Here's the story of my experience in Miami- http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/002557.html

ETA: I couldn't resist bumping the original thread. Seems like a good time to revisit considering how relevant the topic is to what's happening this election season.

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