WIP

Which hardly justifies calling every opposing group "fascist." But, I'm still not backing away from my position that conservatives are already halfway down the road to fascism, with their appeals to religion, retributive justice, emphasis on nationalism, and disregard for civil liberties. Who in the corporate media is showing sympathy to communist ideology? In the U.S., the Republican Party has successfully painted "liberal" as a pejorative that most spineless Democrats deny rather than embracing. Authoritarian leaders give orders, and their followers carry out orders without wasting neurons evaluating their latest talking points. On the other hand, liberals don't follow leaders unconditionally, and that, in a nutshell is how less than one quarter of the U.S. adult population is effectively running the nation's policy-making. I don't know about where you are, but I haven't seen a Communist Party candidate on the ballot where I live in quite a few years! Be that as it may, even during the Cold War, a Communist, or Marxist-Leninist could say that they were following a different brand of communism than the one in the Soviet Union, or in China; but a Nazi is taking ownership of a political movement cannot be separated from it's one time national leader - Adolf Hitler, and one that fully embraces racism, so that is still a more difficult hurdle to clear. One big difference though, is that the Soviet Union could not use Marxist theory to justify Russian supremacy, while Nazism fully incorporated Aryan supremacy in its political philosophy, as well as placing other races on a scale with varying degrees of inferiority.

I wasn't aware of what the hell this "fascism with a smiley face" was about until I learned that Jonah Goldberg wrote a book on the subject, with a smiley face icon that looks like it came from a Walmart ad. I have too many other subjects I want to read about, to waste valuable time reading Goldberg's book - the description on the Amazon page looks like it's in the same realm as Ann Coulter's "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," which uses similar blame-shifting strategies to portray liberal academics in universities as dangerous subversives out to destroy Christian America. The obvious reason for her stupid diatribe that's one third creationism, is because the universities remain the last bastion for critics of rightwing authoritarianism. As for Goldberg, he wrote a rebuttal of sorts to critics in National Review, wherein he is forced to explain the actual conflict in Italy at the time with the Communist Party as:"In the era that we’re talking about the great question on the Left was between different kinds of socialism: International Socialism or National Socialism.". What the hell is the good of his label: "two different kinds of socialism" if the only distinguishing feature he can cite is that the Marxists were internationalists, while Mussolini incorporated nationalism in his movement? If his book mentioned that Pope Pius and the wealthiest industrialists and landowners at the time, turned against the Prime Minister and threw their support behind Mussolini, then maybe I could take his labels a little more seriously! The obvious reason why most legitimate historians and political scientists have placed fascism and nazism on the right side of the political spectrum is because of their collusion with the aristocrats and established business leaders, and their use of traditional conservative values of nationalism and religion. There's nothing saying that Marxism doesn't qualify as a totalitarian system of government, but communism focuses its appeal on adopting new values -- a classless society where the aristocrats have their wealth and land confiscated by the people, internationalism, equality for women...which are designed to appeal to those who aren't happy with tradition, and want something radically new. While the rightwing fascists create a vision of returning to past glory, when the nation was respected, when people followed traditional religious and family values....and since this is the vision churned out endlessly by the corporate-sponsored authoritarian conservatives today, Sinclair Lewis's dark vision of a future American fascism is more relevant than any smiley faced fascism that Jonah Goldberg wants to dream up!

There is a conspiracy theory that he might have been set up because as IMF director, he was working with a group that wants to replace the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency. Even if that's true, there is such a long history of bad behaviour that was covered up and even ridiculed by comedians in France, that he may as well put a bullseye target on his head. The story is similar to Eliot Spitzer being taken down because he was investigating Goldman-Sachs and other major Wall Street firms. His penchant for high priced hookers was already inside knowledge just waiting to pop up at an inopportune time.

In other words...total nonsense!

Whatever your supernatural hobby-horse is, it cannot be accepted as part of any applied theory until it is testable and can be demonstrated repeatedly by independent investigators. That's the whole point of methodological naturalism, you don't get to claim something as fact until it clears the bar!

No, it's just being rude and annoying...like people who use all-caps. If you are really that confident, you would be presenting your own arguments, instead of cutting and pasting lame arguments of others.

I noticed recently that the dispute between the O-bots and ideological progressives has opened up in public since an interview Chris Hedges did with Cornell West. Previous criticisms of Obama by West have gone without comment; but now that the Obama Administration is gearing up for the election marathon, Obama loyalists are coming out of the woodwork to mostly attack Cornel West's character, since old standby's like "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" aren't working anymore. The Nation tossed up Melissa Harris-Perry to attack West, but checking through the comments on that Nation piece, I couldn't help notice that they are running at least 3 or 4 to one against Perry and in support of West's criticisms of the Obama Administration. When the Tea Party phenomena started up after the 2008 elections, many progressive commentators started taking notice of how the Republicans are scared of their rightwing crazies, while the Democrats take them for granted, even attacking them as standing in the way of bipartisan compromise. Well, now it looks like the Dems have a problem on the left, and it's their own stupid fault for not understanding their base of support, and just trying to use them for their own political and personal advantages. That's why these so-called tea party libertarians are liars from the start! The number of Republicans and prominent tea party activists who have even commented on domestic spying and other attacks on civil liberties can be counted on one hand...after Ron Paul and Bob Barr - who was pretty much banished from rightwingland for criticizing the Patriot Act, it's a very short list indeed. The problem is the ideological libertarians are only antiwar because they are isolationists, not because they care all that much about the waste and human misery created by war industries.

I'm sure there are more reasons for the rise of the working middle class in the post-war period; but it does seem strange that the real hardline corporate capitalists like Milton Friedman, and their acolytes like Ronald Reagan, were not able to take control of the Republican Party (let alone the Democratic Party) until after the Soviet economy started to collapse, and it only remained as a military threat in world affairs. Command economies are often very successful in creating economic growth in the early stages; but the Soviet and other communist nation attempts to centrally plan a consumer economy similar to America, was an impossible paradox right from the start. But I still can't get past the fact that the bankers and corporate CEO's were so concerned that the working class was seeing economic improvements during the years when Soviet economic growth and technological developments were considered an equal threat to their military build-up. Also, during those years, the Religious Right signed off on keeping the teaching of evolution out of public schools, when JFK demanded a program of drastic improvements to science education in American schools. As with the money conservatives, the Religious Right started back to work at ruining science education once the foreign threat was diminishing. This fraud that equates "market democracy" with real democracy is not only wrong, it is the complete opposite of what has happened with real life examples. For example, the creator or modern rightwing economic theory - Frederich Von Hayek predicted that the election of the Labour Party in England, after WWI would inevitably lead to England becoming a Soviet-style communist nation....and he was wrong! Just like his later followers were wrong about the social democratic parties in Europe, and they were even more wrong about "free markets" promoting democracy. Milton Friedman's laboratory in Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship, demonstrated conclusively that rightwing capitalists would prefer to destroy a democratic society and could abolish import regulations, and internal regulatory agencies in the interest of promoting the rightwing business agenda. Bush 1 was also equally wrong that the capitalist revolution going on in Communist China would promote democracy after the Tien an Mien Square Massacre. The Communist Party is more firmly entrenched in China than it has ever been. It should be a simple concept to grasp that at its core, capitalism promotes income stratification and inequality in a society, so removing taxation and regulatory oversight, frees those who control the majority of the wealth to keep building and building a greater advantage over the majority of people. The present situation of 1% of the wealthiest controlling 40% of the wealth comes as no surprise in that light.

You and Shady, and the whole host of rightwing pundits, broadcasters and blogger just feel free to make this shit up as you go along! Calling a corporation that deliberately seeks monopoly markets "left wing" means that terms: left wing and right wing have no meaningful relevance in the real world. They are just characters in rightwing dramatizations of real life. Real fascisms are totalitarian, authoritarian systems that use traditional cultural values and traditional levers of power in the society to exercise control of the population....and that makes them conservative and rightwing in any honest analysis of the problem: “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross,” attributed to Sinclair Lewis.

I haven't written much about the Reconstructionists, Dominionists and the others in the theocracy movement lately; I'll start a few threads just for your enjoyment, since the rightwing propaganda you normally dine on, doesn't delve into the promoters of 10 Commandments monuments with any degree of depth.

This is why I don't see the rise of the NDP to Official Opposition as the good news story that a lot of the left have taken from the election. When Liberal support started to weaken, it appeared that Layton's strategy was to target the Liberals more than keep the focus on the Harper Government, and the bad job they have done in office. The vacuum left by the collapsing Liberals helped Harper get his majority with less than 40% of the votes cast, and the new NDP looks to be positioning itself as the left-of-center alternative to the Conservatives. Our politics will end up looking more like the American two party duopoly as the years go by.

Go back and look at the Daily Beast article on Cindy Sheehan I referenced yesterday! It clearly points out that, whatever you think of her, Sheehan has not changed her beliefs or her approach in the interests of political advantage. The difference is, as the article clearly demonstrates - that the Democratic Party has tried to muzzle their antiwar voices since Obama became President, and took ownership of the wars and the military policies. It's been noted by Chris Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Scahill, and Glenn Greenwald, that halfway in to the Obama Administration, they have done little or nothing to make major course changes, and in some areas, especially civil rights issues, they are actually performing worse than the Bush Admin. - the recent New Yorker article on Thomas Drake, informs us that he is facing a 35 year sentence, after his release of documents was retroactively declared espionage, while the people guilty of wrongdoing that he made public, are going to get away scott-free. The takeaway is that most civil freedoms are not going to be protected by either Republican or Democrat governments, and the only prosecutions will be against whistleblowers who inform the public of how their rights are violated by the state.

Thanks. I noticed awhile back, when I came across an article comparing the growing concentration of wealth at the top with the age of the robber-barons, that the post-war period of trade unions, high taxes on the wealthiest citizens, and a large middleclass turns out to be an anomaly. Today, the modern day robber-barons are returning to past practices. The only explanation I can see, is that the fall of Communism removed the only incentive they had to win over the majority of working people.

For some people, displaying FACT in bold, large type, makes it more believable.

It's your theory, not mine! You're the one who proposed that there are things presently identified as supernatural, which are really natural phenomena just outside of our capabilities to detect...using radio waves as the analogy, as something undetected before the modern era. The alternative explanation is that the supernatural phenomena doesn't exist, and without direct or indirect evidence, is just in the minds of it's adherents.

Libertarian ideologues may be just unhinged by the radical notion that unlimited personal freedom is possible in an organized society, without any curbs on personal freedoms in the interest of social cohesion and the welfare of the group. But, when it comes to these strange animals like libertarian billionaires, and Christian nationalist libertarians -- a little closer scrutiny is needed to understand the motives of what they get out of the libertarian brand. When it comes to the billionaires, or money-motivated libertarians, the libertarian philosophy provides them a moral justification for continually limiting the role of government, and removing the only available tool that the average citizen has to check the growing power of artificially created corporate citizens. The libertarian paradise that the Koch Brothers, and the politicians they finance - like Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jim DeMint etc., are setting in place, is one with even lower corporate and high end tax rates; and where government regulatory agencies serve as rubberstamps for the industries they are supposed to be regulating. They say history repeats itself, and this would just be a trip down memory lane, back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when the Company owned the lives of its workers. I don't know about Rand Paul, but Walker, and Congressional libertarians like Pat Toomey, Nikki Haley, and especially Jim DeMint, are also Christian nationalists....likely Reconstructionists also, who would abolish secular law for Theonomy (Christian Law), and bust up public education in favour of private religious schools. So, there is quite an assortment of strange bedfellows who call themselves libertarians today; and they have no real interest in promoting freedom and liberty!

It's hard to verify some of the preliminary information, but one disturbing fact that the New York Post is running with, is that the Hotel management waited 3 hours before alerting the police. It looks like that one law for the rich/one law for the poor situation, where they seemed to be trying to give him the head start he needed to get back to France and evade arrest and prosecution.

It's what usually happens in a two party system. The British Labour Party isn't the same Party it was in the 1920's, at the end of WWI. If the Liberals have really collapsed into permanent obscurity like many believe, the NDP will keep repositioning itself to try to occupy everything left of the Conservatives.

Yes, and as soon as you show me the evidence for the supernatural radio frequencies, I'll believe it! Until then......

Looks to me like Harper is following the American conservative game plan: spend all the money on useless shit for the military, and then claim they have to cut health care and domestic spending to balance the budget.

I said it explains "part" of the change in thinking, not everything! If we define liberal as being progressive -- progressive, by its very definition means being willing to try new things, and new approaches to solving problems. As people age, their tastes become more entrenched, and they are more resistant to change. We can see an example of this in music tastes, which change through teenage years, but are usually set for life by early 20's. Very few people are open to new, unfamiliar styles of music as they enter adulthood. The marketers have even crafted a 20 year rule by applying this knowledge -- 20 years after a major trend, or a band has hit their peak, it's time for the nostalgia tour and record sales. And, ofcourse, having children will make someone more resistant to change, and more clingy to approaches they consider traditional....this is where the new mega-churches have stepped in to find their market niche. And, I already mentioned how fear can skew towards conservatism...the 9/11 effect for example. But fear only works temporarily, which is why the rightwing factions dependent on making machines of war have to keep tossing up new exaggerated threats to try to scare the population with. But, politics and economics are about more than psychology. For my part, the failure of libertarian economic theory, and the lies and fraud perpetrated by Neoconservatism, have pushed me back to where I was in my early 20's.

I haven't been in Alberta for over 30 years, so I can't comment on the specifics, but, it's worth noting that sports franchises were the first to play the global corporatism game of pitting one government jurisdiction against another in a bidding process, which in this case, provided franchise owners with free arenas and stadiums. Now that the economy has tanked, the idiotic sports fans who will pay any price for a ticket, and the parasites in local media that depend on the teams for their revenues, are being out-voted by the less-than-fanatic majority who are turfing out mayors and city councilors for giving team owners the keys to the vault. So, are hockey fans in Alberta still willing to be blackmailed into building the owners brand new hockey arenas? If Calgary and Edmonton are willing to call their bluff, they may find that the owners don't have the re-location options they claim to have right now.

Like this one mentioned in another thread: Canada orders 1,300 smart bombs $100,000-apiece weapons to be used in Libyan mission Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canada+orders+smart+bombs/4800544/story.html#ixzz1Mj224Ha6 Just like the U.S., the conservatives have empty pockets when it comes to paying for healthcare and other public services, but there's always lots of money to blow shit up! We know how the U.S. benefits from using their oversized military as economic leverage, but what the hell is in it for Canada? Then get rid of globalization! We need global cooperation for protecting the environment and stopping or preventing wars -- we don't need global cooperation in the interests of multinational corporations who consider themselves a higher power than mere nation-states.

It's unfortunate for you and your cause that Canadians only have to look south of the border...Wisconsin in particular...to see how the conservative rightwing strategy of union-busting and driving down wages plays out in real life! 30 years ago, rightwing backers of free trade, deregulation and unregulated corporate capitalism, told us that everybody would benefit from Friedman economics -- 'a rising tide raises all boats' etc.. Well, the results are in now! Free trade and removal on import restrictions have allowed corporations to move production to the cheapest, near slave labour sources, so that the government workers, who have stayed where they were, look rich in comparison. And you, just like your rightwing brethren south of the border, say the solution is to bust the remaining public sector unions and drive down the wages of government employees to match the dismal state that the private sector is in! Amazing how so called freedom-lovin rightwingers think nothing of stripping public service workers of a basic right to bargain collectively. This fraud scam worked in the U.S...at least until now, but it's not working in Canada, since we can see the results in the decline of most U.S. living standards to third world conditions.

That's because you misuse the term fascist as a pejorative against causes you don't like, while corporate-loving conservative and libertarians are leading us down the road to fascism right here and now.