Barack the Commie

The right wingnuts are cracking these days. Obama, they say, is a socialist, or even worse, a communist. Omigod, what are we going to do? Everybody knows God hates commies and socialists! Everybody knows free market capitalism was designed by God at the beginning of the world. Everybody knows the government is the problem, not the solution. I mean, isn't that what Ronnie, the B-grade movie actor, somnolent chief executive, "savior" of the world from the Soviet yoke, said?

I guess because Soviet Russia cracked down on religion (probably because Stalin was spiritually abused in his youth by Russian Orthodoxy), "communism," and/or "socialism" have been the most EVIL things ever in the minds of American's rightwingnuts.

Thus, Star Parker, the christianist rightwingnut, who scribbles her opinions for onenewsnow, is worried sick that Obama is bringing down the country with his "socialistic" plans. Parker is black and claims that she grew up with all those terrible government programs which did not solve the problems of the black community, but made those problems worse.

Parker wrote a book awhile back (Uncle Sam's Plantation) in which she argued that "there are two Americas -- a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on captialism."

Heh. Heh.

And she wrote this: "Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialist created monstrous moral and spiritual problems -- the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others."

Heh. Heh.

Let's see. The truth is we give a pittance to our poor folks. The "real" welfare in this country is essentially for the rich, and always has been. We subsidized the railroads and the airlines. We bail out failed savings and loan company to the tune of billions of dollars; we subsidize a host of other industries; we bail out banks and investment firms and auto companies; we cut taxes on the rich which is just another handout the cost of which is borne on the backs of the middle class and the poor.

Parker doesn't seem to understand any of that. So, she says that with the help of her god, she was able to get out of that terrible socialism that was her childhood and now she has found the light which is that socialism is bad, bad, bad, and an unfettered free market is godly, right, and splendiforous.

The problem, for Parker, is that "socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation." Hah! They've been on the plantation, baby! For years, grabbing as many handfuls of government loot as they could get by with.


Parker, though is a pansy when it comes to accusing our president of bad things. WorldNetDaily - now that's where you want to go if you want really nasty stuff. Janet Porter has an article at that site which is titled, "Socialism Communism scheduled for a vote in Senate." The word, "socialism," is crossed out, leaving "communism."

See, it's not merely socialism that our new young president is about - it's COMMUNISM! Omigod! Yup. And Porter tells how the Communist Party USA "is doing Communist cartwheels becauses [they] believe that [the] communist agenda is being embraced." Yup. Why, recently, Sam Webb, the leader of the Communist Party USA said, "We now have not simply a friend, but a people's advocate in the White House."

It get's worse. Porter says that last fall, before the election, the former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, sent her an e-mail which came from a software developer named Tom Fife "who hold of how he first heard of the name 'Barack.'"

Are you ready? Fife was in Moscow in the early 90s. He was attending a dinner party. At the dinner party a woman spoke up and said, "Well, I think you are going to be surprised when you get a black president very soon."

And then: "What if I told you that you will have a black president very soon and he will be a Communist?"

She continued: "Well, you will; and he will be a Communist."


To make a long story short, the woman described how "This is not some idle talk. He is already born, and he is educated and being groomed to be president right now." Yup. She said he went to an "Ivy League" college, his name is Barack, his mother is white and father is a black African.

"He's [Barack] intelligent and he is half white and has been raised from the cradle to be an atheist and a Communist. He's gone to the finest schools. He is being guided every step of the way and he will be irresistible to America."

This woman also knew he was from Hawaii, went to school in California, lived in Chicago. He would soon be elected to the Illinois Legislature.

"Have no doubt," she said, "he is one of us, a Soviet."


Janet Porter has to be a certified idiot to print this crap. I print it only to bring to the forefront the kind of rotten, evil garbage that is coming down the pike from the christianist wingnuts.

Beware, the creepy christianists are out to get you, Obama!


You can read Porter's article here.

Socialism brings about collapse

Yup. "Socialism" means financial collapse, according to the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher Monckton.

Well, maybe not. Sweden, Norway, and other nations are among the most stable and most advanced countries in the world and operate on a "socialistic" financial system.

Maybe Viscount Monckton doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. For example, he says of his beloved England:

"Every Labor government there has ever been from 1926 to the present day has always ended in exactly the same way because they essentially try to run a communist financial system."

Huh? Someone please explain to the Viscount the difference between apples and oranges. Communism and democracy are political systems. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems.

Thus, a democracy like Sweden may operate very well under a socialistic economic system. In the United States we have had a partially socialist system for years. Public schools are socialistic. The U.S. Post Office is socialistic. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid might be termed socialistic.

Socialism is not necessarily bad, nor is capitalism necessarily good. In fact, recently we have seen just how bad free-market, unregulated capitalism can be! Thus, the government has had to step in and enact "socialistic" measures to keep the economy from collapsing. And, the funny thing, good ol' not-so-conservative George W. Bush is the one who did it!


To people like Viscount Monckton, however, reality, reason and truth seldom make an impression. Thus, he pontificates that the United States will surely collapse if it falls prey to "socialism."

Monckton is worried about Obama. He's afraid Obama is going to "redistribute the wealth," and the poor folks might get a chunk of it. My God, dontcha know "redistribution of the wealth" only works when it's redistributed into the greedy hands of the rich?


Been there, done that. We're in a terrible mess right now, not because of socialism, but because of unfettered, free-market capitalism and an insane redistribution of the country's wealth to the very rich through a system of misguided tax cuts by the Bush administration!

Mr. Monckton is a gasbag who ought to head back to his estate and contemplate chasing the foxes instead long-deceased conservative fantasies about the evils of socialism.

(Monckton is also a "journalist," a failed politician, a Roman Catholic, an amateur scientiest, and a global-warming denier. He is very rich. No wonder he doesn't like socialism. If there's wealth to be redistributed, he wants it!)

Star Parker and GM or how she failed to learn from history

I've written about the christianist rightwinger, Star Parker, before. She's a "syndicated columnist" who holds sway at the christianist rightwing "news" outfit, onenewsnow.com. When I've taken sufficient Pepto-Bismol, I will sometimes read what she writes. But it's hard, like nails on a chalkboard. She lives in a fantasy world that has little or nothing to do with reality.

For example, in one recent column, titled "We fail to learn from history," Parker tells us that the reason the markets are flailing about and the auto companies are going down is because of ... are you ready? ... "Government control. Central planning. And Godlessness."

Yes, and those are precisely the things that define communism and socialism! And those are the twin diseases from which we suffer. And Americans must "wake up and realize that this election was not a cure for our problems but a symptom of the disease."


Consider, says Star, the auto industry. GM in particular. "In 1970," she says, "GM had 50 percent of the U.S. auto market. Today it has 20 percent." And then she asks, "What happened?"

Well, in 1973 the world "changed." OPEC "discovered its power, and drove up energy prices." But that was only part of it. If only the government had left the car companies alone! But, no, wails Parker. "...in our high-profile auto industry that's not what happened. Our politicians, with cooperation from our auto industry executives, decided that the auto companies could not be left to their own resources to adjust to new realities.

"First we enacted import quotas on Japanese cards. Second, we enacted fuel standards to dictate to our car companies what kind of cars to make. And, of course, third, the power of the union was left intact." Of course.

"Now," wails Parker again, "look where we are. We have destroyed an industry that is the product of Americans not being able to compete, but of allowing itself to become dependent on government.

"This is why our auto companies have failed. This is why communist and socialist countries have failed."

Who is this "we" she keeps talking about, and why in god's name would the auto industry execs cooperate with the government to bring down their own industry?


Parker is very confused. First of all, as I've said many times, communism, like democracy, is a political system and socialism, like capitalism, is an economic system. In the United States, a democracy, we have had a mixed capitalist/socialist economic system for most of our existence. And it's worked fairly well. The problems we've faced historically and the problems we face currently have not ensued from our "socialism," but from unbridled capitalism which operates on the basis of self-centeredness and greed.


When it comes to the auto industry and specifically General Motors, Star Parker is not only confused, but she's deep in the woods where darkness prevails.

In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, Alex Taylor III describes in detail what went wrong at GM. And he should know, as he's been a business journalist for the past 32 years with a special interest in General Motors.

Taylor, in an article titled "GM And Me," summarizes GM's problems this way:

Although GM executives have been "smart, sincere, diligent -- modern-day Eagle Scouts," they also "became comfortable, insular, self-referential, and too wedded to the status quo ... They prefer stability over conflict, continuity over disorder, and GM's way over anybody else's. They believe that hard work will overcome adversity, and that tomorrow will be better than today--despite four decades of evidence to the contrary.

"In many ways the story of General Motors since the 1960s is a tale of accelerating irrelevance. Customer preferences changed, competition tightened, technology made big leaps, and GM was always driving a lap behind. ...

"Ask Rick Wagoner [GM's CEO] why GM isn't more like Toyota, and he'd tell you, 'We're playing our own game--taking advantage of our own unique heritage and strengths.' Turns out GM should have forgotten that and become more like Toyota. Toyota's market cap is now $103.6 billion; GM's is $1.8 billion."


Taylor gets specific. In 1999, GM revealed the Pontiac Axtec, calling it a "lifestyle support vehicle" and the "most versatile vehicle on the planet." What they didn't say is that it was arguably the ugliest vehicle on the planet. GM had failed to do the most fundamental thing required of a car company: create a vehicle that people wanted to buy.

Then, in September of 2006, GM unveiled a fuel-cell car called the Sequel. It was a "game-changer" said the GM honchos. Four months later, the Sequel was history and GM was touting the electric Chevy Volt, which the honchos also called a "game-changer."

This kind of futility is not new. By 1980, GM was still growing, but chinks were appearing in its armor. "The company seemed to forget how to execute," says Taylor. "It started to downsize its model line after the 1973 oil embargo and change over to front-wheel drive, but it encountered all kinds of engineering problems." The Chevy Vega overheated which warped the cylinders in its aluminum engine block. GM's diesel engines couldn't handle the temperatures needed to burn diesel fuel. Because of a shortage of V8 engines, GM installed Chevy engines in Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. In 1981, customers rebelled when they discovered that the Cadillac Cimarron was essentially a Chevy Citation with a Cadillac crest.

Roger Smith came on board as CEO in the 1980s and had a basket full of ideas. He's the one who came up with the Saturn plan - "a revolutionary way of making and selling cars." It wasn't all that revolutionary, of course, and eventually bombed. "Smith spent billions to automate GM's factories with robots. Usually robots permit a car company to produce several different models in a factory. But GM, wanting to keep things simple, configured its plants to produce just one or two models--and ended up with a system that was no more efficient than the old one."


Taylor has much more to say, but one thing stands out, Ms. Parker notwithstanding: GM's problems had nothing to do with government interference or with GM becoming dependent on the government! GM has gone downhill all by itself!

Perhaps Parker could get a job writing for Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage, neither of which are encumbered by morality or truth.