Give them socialism or give them death

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday March 27, 2010 · 8:53 AM PDT

2010/03/27 · 08:53

I’m very glad that the likes of Palin, Beck and others at Faux News have raised the spectre of "Socialism" after a long hiatus on the American political scene. Of course socialism is a "dirty" word here in the good ole "tea-bagger" USA. That was not the case in the first third of the 20th century when there was a vigorous Socialist/Communist movement in our country. And it’s obviously not the case in Europe, South America, Asia and the rest of the world, where socialist parties and movements rule or challenge the status quo. Even though "socialism" in Europe has preserved the capitalist system more than challenged it the concept has great prestige and resonance among the people at large. Unfortunately the left movement in our country was decapitated in the 1950s and has never fully recovered, in that fundamental critiques of our capitalist system are still verboten. So even though the right wings characterization of Obama as a "socialist" or "communist" is comical, in that most of his policies are to preserve the capitalist system under stress (much as FDR did, but with recycled moderate Republican rather than social democratic policies), it still puts socialism back on the map to be properly elucidated and understood by critics of the "system" whose critiques have been, to date, totally inchoate.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 19, 2010 · 8:54 PM PDT

2010/03/19 · 20:54

I’m 62 years old and sad as it may be, I realistically only have 10 or 20 years left on Earth. I am also an unreconstructed Marxist, socialist, atheistic, sinophile as anyone who wants to read my previous diaries can see. As such I relish listening to Fox News because it’s commentators confirm my wildest dreams about the future of our country.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday February 12, 2010 · 4:56 PM PST

2010/02/12 · 16:56

A recent Gallup poll shows that 36% of Americans have a favorable impression of socialism with numbers reaching a majority of Democrats and self-described liberals. The recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll shows that 63% of GOPers think Obama is a socialist. All of a sudden after years of reticence the "socialist" meme is back in American political parlance. The Gallup poll did not offer a definition of "socialism" and most people in this country, be they Gopers or Dems, are probably not all that "clear on the concept." Given the fact that the American media has effectively immunized the American public against "socialism" by nearly 100 years of propaganda, the fact that over one third of Americans are still open to the idea and left-leaning citizens even more so, is something of a surprise. So what is "socialism" and what should 21st century socialism in America look like?

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday January 28, 2010 · 5:11 PM PST

2010/01/28 · 17:11

Pootie love.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday January 14, 2010 · 5:46 PM PST

2010/01/14 · 17:46

Oh the humanity of it all. Now Haiti, but how many times has fate befallen the most vulnerable amongst us. So far this century, the Sumatran tsunami, earthquakes in Kashmir, Iran and Sichuan, China to name a few. The following poem by Zhao Bo, published in the Chinese press after the Wenchuan, Sichuan quake in 2008 speaks the universal language of unfathomable sorrow and suffering that victims of natural disasters all face.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 08, 2010 · 11:45 PM PST

2010/01/08 · 23:45

Fifty years, makes me an old man. Fifty years ago I was a 12 year old kid in central Jersey as the 1960s began. The decade of Camelot and the Viet Cong, the Beatles and Bob Dylan, bell bottoms and shagging hair, the civil rights movement and woman's lib, what might be considered the beginnings of the world we live in.

Poll

77 votes Show Results

Which 50 year time span saw or will see the most change?

77 votes Vote Now!

Which 50 year time span saw or will see the most change?

2010-2060

35 votes

1960-2009

18 votes

1910-1959

18 votes

1860-1909

3 votes

1810-1859

2 votes

1760-1809

1 vote

The Anthropic Principle: Cosmology's Pandora's Box

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday January 06, 2010 · 9:48 PM PST

2010/01/06 · 21:48

With the popularity of "Avatar" it seems like a good time to once again address the question of the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth. This question has been studied scientifically ever since the formulation of Drake's Equation in 1960. Drake attempted to define the astronomical variables associated with intelligent life and assign estimated values to them in order to calculate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our Galaxy. Since it's inception Drake's Equation has been elaborated upon, but the values of all the described variables have been very speculative and estimates of the number of intelligent life forms in the "Milky Way" has varied from 1 (ourselves) to the thousands or millions.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 29, 2009 · 9:13 PM PST

2009/12/29 · 21:13

After finding out about firedoglake.com’s attacks on the HCR bill and their desire to kill it in league with the likes of Norquist and other right-wingers my thoughts could only harken back to FDR and the passage of Social Security legislation in the 1930s.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 29, 2009 · 1:47 PM PST

2009/12/29 · 13:47

In response to some very kind words in the comments to my last diary I thought I would share with whomever may be interested some random thoughts dealing with the ultimate question of "what's it all about." Some may be offended by my invective against religion (in particular the Abrahamic ones) and be turned off at times by my vituperative language describing their antiquated beliefs, but its all part and parcel of what I believe, so indulge me the opportunity to not only vent my outrage but also the chance to reverently extol the magnificence of the material universe.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday December 26, 2009 · 10:41 PM PST

2009/12/26 · 22:41

With the holiday season in full swing its time to reflect on some of the fundamental questions we as self-conscious sentient beings obsess over. One that has been addressed recently in a Dkos diary, concerns the perennial question of belief in God, and the conflict between the received word of God as recorded in the Bible and accepted scientific knowledge.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 24, 2009 · 11:16 PM PST

2009/12/24 · 23:16

For all those critics of the HCR bill that will likely be passed and signed by the POTUS, please don't lift up a stone to drop on your collective feet. If this bill is not passed the right wing rethugs will be rejoicing and DeMint will be proven right. It will be Obama's Waterloo and his administration will be viewed by the country as a failed, ineffective presidency. The Dems will lose the 2010 midterm elections and health care reform will be put on the back burner for another decade. The progressive agenda will be suffocated before it even began to breathe.

Poll

62 votes Show Results

What's your attitude toward the HCR Bill?

62 votes Vote Now!

What's your attitude toward the HCR Bill?

Kill Bill, its a sell-out to the health insurance industry

24 votes

Pass the bill, its the best we can hope for

0 votes

Pass the bill and work to improve it by electing more progressives to Congress

38 votes

The way out of Afghanistan.

detler

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday October 31, 2009 · 8:57 PM PDT

2009/10/31 · 20:57

This is getting g ridiculous. We continue to kill and maim Afghans by our mistaken policies in their sovereign country while wasting billions of dollars and American lives on a misbegotten attempt to pacify the Afghan countryside.

Newer
Older

RSS

Give them socialism or give them death

Why I'm a devoted fan of Fox News.

What is 21st Century Socialism?

Pootie Poets Corner

All of a sudden we lost our most beloved

The times they are a'changing

The Anthropic Principle: Cosmology's Pandora's Box

Firedoglake: Latter Day Trotskyites

Musings of a lifelong atheist

Contemplating my navel on a rainy day. The Omphalos Hypothesis Redux.

Let's Get Real.

The way out of Afghanistan.