Socialism @ MindSay 
capitalism
I've noticed lately that a lot of people seem to have discovered that Barack Obama is a socialist.
There's a lot of that going around.
Socialism, I mean.
The only politician that I know of on the national scene who is definitely not a socialist is Texas congressman Ron Paul. And look where that got him. During the presidential primary campaign Paul was treated as a laughingstock by his fellow Republicans for such stances as his call for young people to be permitted to opt out of Social Security.
Paul's having the last laugh these days. As you can see in this clip, the entire U.S. economy is now socialist thanks to the big corporate bailout, says Dr. Paul.
And then there is the unpleasant fact that every senior citizen in America is what my Aussie friends used to call "a dole bludger," someone who takes welfare without working.
One such apparent dole bludger held forth at a recent McCain rally in Wisconsin. The old codger worked himself up into a frenzy that even the hot-tempered McCain might envy, screaming "I'm mad, I'm really mad!" and then shouting, "And what's going to surprise ya, is it's not the economy, it's the socialists taking over our country."
The old coot made it clear that the hated socialists are the Democrats. But assuming he was over 65, which he certainly appeared to be, the guy is receiving the benefit of at least two socialist programs. One, of course, is Social Security. There's a reason they called it "social" security and not Capitalist Security. It's a welfare program and the current codgers are getting a free ride paid for by working Americans. True, they paid into it, but anyone who lives a normal life span will get out a lot more than he or she put in.
And then there's Medicare. The current crop of seniors paid a pittance into it during their working years, but they now have the benefit of a system of socialized medicine till the day they die.
Does this guy really want McCain to fight socialism in America?
Imagine McCain told this guy he was absolutely right and as of January President McCain would end Social Security and Medicare and pay back to senior citizens the amount they paid in, with interest. By February, this geezer would be at a rally demanding to have his Medicare coverage restored.
The truth is, Americans love socialism. They'd better. This is a socialist country. Here's an interesting article that compares our government-funded health care systems, primarily Medicare and Medicaid, with other countries:
"The average rich-country government spends 6.7 percent of GDP on health; America's 6.8 percent is very slightly higher. The national health systems of Canada and Britain cost about 6.9 percent of GDP, and that of Australia 6.4 percent. Germany's government spends the most on health care at 8.9 percent of GDP, followed by Norway, Sweden, France, and Denmark."
The big difference, of course, is that in most of those countries the socialized system covers everyone, while our socialized system covers just the poor and the elderly. Oh yeah, don't let me forget government workers. They have a system of guaranteed benefits and early retirement that the typical Brit or Swede would envy.
So our system is socialism. It's just an inept form of socialism. And it's also an unsupportable form. The baby-boomer retirement was going to bankrupt us even before the recent market meltdown. Now we could be on the verge of a slide into Third-World status. I've been to countries where you need to carry a backpack just for the bills needed to buy a beer. It's not a pretty sight.
The only way to prevent that would be to take the harsh medicine that Dr. Paul offered us during the primary season. But not a lot of Americans want that prescription, and I suspect the old crank in this video would be among the last to down a dose of it.
NOTE: Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute just sent me a link to this paper in which he argues that Obama's plan is socialized medicine, as is Medicare. He doesn't deal with McCain's plan, but it is slightly less socialist than Obama's.
Treblinka Death Camp History
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The death camp at Treblinka was located in the north-eastern region of the Generalgouvernement, in a sparsely populated area near Malkinia Gora, a junction on the Warsaw – Bialystok railway line, some 4km northwest of the small Treblinka village and its railway station.
Near to an established Arbeitslager (forced labour camp) known as Treblinka l, the site chosen was heavily wooded and well hidden from view. Treblinka I housed both Poles and Jews, and was located by a gravel pit, one and half km from the site of the death camp.
The labour camp functioned from June 1941 until 23 July 1944. The death camp was established as part of Aktion Reinhard. Construction work began at the beginning of April 1942, after SS men came to the village of Poniatowo and inspected the locality.
The building contractors were the German construction firms `Schonbronn’ from Leipzig, and `Schmidt – Munstermann’, which had an office in Warsaw. SS- Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla from the SS-Bauleitung Zamosc supervised the construction work. Primarily, the workers building the death camp were Jews brought there in trucks from neighbouring villages, such as Wegrow and Stoczek Wegrowski. Prisoners, mainly Polish, from the Treblinka l labour camp were also utilised in the building work. The witness Lucjan Puchala recalled:
“Initially we did not know the reason for building the branch track, and it was only at the end of the job that I found out from conversation among the Germans that the track was to lead to a camp for Jews. The work took two weeks and it was completed on 15 June 1942. Parallel to the construction of the track, earthworks continued.
The SS-men and Ukrainians supervising the work killed a few dozen people every day, so that when I looked from the place where I worked to the place where the Jews worked, the field was covered with corpses. The imported workers were used to dig deep ditches and to build various barracks. In particular, I know that a building was built of bricks and concrete, which as I later learned, contained people to be exterminated”.
The camp’s first commander was the Austrian SS-Obersturmführer, Dr Irmfried Eberl, who had served in Bernburg (a “euthanasia” killing centre), and also, for a short time, at the Sobibor death camp. In August 1942 Eberl was relieved of his command by Globocnik, when Globocnik and Wirth visited Treblinka, having been made aware of a chaotic breakdown in the extermination process.
This had arisen because Eberl had accepted more transports than Treblinka could handle. In late August Eberl was replaced by SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, the former commander of the Sobibor death camp. Christian Wirth stayed in Treblinka to sort out the chaos created by Eberl, and brought several experienced SS-men from Belzec, such as Franz and Hackenholt, to assist with the task.
The camp staff of Treblinka, responsible for the smooth operation of the mass killings, consisted of about 35–40 Germans, all of whom wore the field-grey uniform of the Waffen-SS. None of them held a rank lower than SS-Unterscharführer.
Read more about Treblinka here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/treblinka.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Don't be surprised if you receive some ad-hominem abuse from libertarian evangelists when you don't accept their arguments. It's no different than if a communist called you bourgeois or a Bircher called you a commie lover. Sometimes they'll go overboard and even accuse you of mental disease, at which time you can point out to them the fine company they keep: Stalin, Hitler, etc.
(from Critiques of Libertarianism)
I don't see any in uproar over this 700 BILLION dollar bailout to help out the people who NEVER had America's interests.
So, who's acting on principal, and who's acting on emotionalism?
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