Our Marxist Wizard of Oz

[Havakasha]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...cRwQ_blog.html

Obama: The most polarizing moderate ever
Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:04 AM ET, 02/07/2012

In 2011, Gallup’s polling showed that President Obama averaged an 80 percent approval rating among Democrats and 12 percent among Republicans, making his third year in office one of the most polarizing on record. For a candidate whose campaign promised an era of post-partisan unity, it must be a disappointing reality check.

But on Friday, political scientist Keith Poole released a study that probably cheered the White House. According to Poole’s highly respected classification system, Obama is the most moderate Democratic president since World War II. Which raises a question: How can Obama simultaneously be one of the most divisive and most moderate presidents of the past century?


(Keith Poole, VoteView.com)
Poole’s study is based on a system for sorting politicians known as “DW-Nominate.” But DW-Nominate doesn’t directly measure ideology. Instead, it measures coalitions. It’s got pretty much every roll-call vote taken between 1789 and December 2011. It looks to see who votes together and how often. The assumption is that the most ideological members of both parties will do the least crossover voting. And it works. Its results line up with both common sense and alternative ways of measuring ideology, like the scorecard kept by the American Conservative Union.

Over the past century, DW-Nominate has revealed a steady increase in congressional polarization. Democrats have moved to the left, while Republicans have moved to the right. But Republicans have moved a lot farther than Democrats.

“Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats,” said Sean Theriault, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.”


(Keith poole, VoteView.com) Political scientists call this “asymmetric polarization,” and there’s evidence of it all around us. Forty years ago, zero Republicans in Congress had signed a pledge to oppose tax increases in any and all circumstances. Today, almost all of them have. There’s no corresponding pledge on the Democratic side.

DW-Nominate rates presidents by processing Congressional Quarterly’s “Presidential Support” index, which tracks roll-call votes on which the president has expressed a clear position. The system then rates the president by looking at the coalitions that emerged in support of his legislation. In essence, it judges the president’s ideology by judging the ideology of the president’s congressional supporters. So how, in an age of incredible congressional polarization, could this system rank Obama as a moderate?

One answer, says Poole, is that Obama is very careful about taking positions on congressional legislation. In the 111th Congress, he took only 78 such positions. Compare that with George W. Bush, who took 291 positions during the 110th Congress, or Bill Clinton, who took 314 positions during the 103rd Congress. So part of the answer might be that, with the exception of high-profile bills such as health-care reform, Obama is hanging back from most of the congressional squabbling.

[SiriuslyLong]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...cRwQ_blog.html

Obama: The most polarizing moderate ever
Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:04 AM ET, 02/07/2012

In 2011, Gallup’s polling showed that President Obama averaged an 80 percent approval rating among Democrats and 12 percent among Republicans, making his third year in office one of the most polarizing on record. For a candidate whose campaign promised an era of post-partisan unity, it must be a disappointing reality check.

But on Friday, political scientist Keith Poole released a study that probably cheered the White House. According to Poole’s highly respected classification system, Obama is the most moderate Democratic president since World War II. Which raises a question: How can Obama simultaneously be one of the most divisive and most moderate presidents of the past century?


(Keith Poole, VoteView.com)
Poole’s study is based on a system for sorting politicians known as “DW-Nominate.” But DW-Nominate doesn’t directly measure ideology. Instead, it measures coalitions. It’s got pretty much every roll-call vote taken between 1789 and December 2011. It looks to see who votes together and how often. The assumption is that the most ideological members of both parties will do the least crossover voting. And it works. Its results line up with both common sense and alternative ways of measuring ideology, like the scorecard kept by the American Conservative Union.

Over the past century, DW-Nominate has revealed a steady increase in congressional polarization. Democrats have moved to the left, while Republicans have moved to the right. But Republicans have moved a lot farther than Democrats.

“Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats,” said Sean Theriault, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.”


(Keith poole, VoteView.com) Political scientists call this “asymmetric polarization,” and there’s evidence of it all around us. Forty years ago, zero Republicans in Congress had signed a pledge to oppose tax increases in any and all circumstances. Today, almost all of them have. There’s no corresponding pledge on the Democratic side.

DW-Nominate rates presidents by processing Congressional Quarterly’s “Presidential Support” index, which tracks roll-call votes on which the president has expressed a clear position. The system then rates the president by looking at the coalitions that emerged in support of his legislation. In essence, it judges the president’s ideology by judging the ideology of the president’s congressional supporters. So how, in an age of incredible congressional polarization, could this system rank Obama as a moderate?

One answer, says Poole, is that Obama is very careful about taking positions on congressional legislation. In the 111th Congress, he took only 78 such positions. Compare that with George W. Bush, who took 291 positions during the 110th Congress, or Bill Clinton, who took 314 positions during the 103rd Congress. So part of the answer might be that, with the exception of high-profile bills such as health-care reform, Obama is hanging back from most of the congressional squabbling.

Let's keep this on topic. This has nothing to do with Obama's Marxist, Lenninist or Socialist leanings.

[Havakasha]

http://voteview.com/blog/?p=317


Below we plot the estimated positions of presidents between 1945 and 2011 along the liberal-conservative scale, which produces a pattern we call the “presidential square wave”. Because we use first dimension (ideological) Common Space DW-NOMINATE scores, presidential locations are directly comparable across time. However, because presidential estimates are based on a limited number of “presidential support” votes– roll calls on which the president clearly indicates his support or opposition to a particular (often contentious) measure, presidential ideal points are somewhat biased towards the ideological extremes (however, this effect is roughly constant for all presidents, so it is unlikely than any particular estimate would be affected more than others).

Our findings here echo those discussed in a prior post that Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats to the left in the contemporary period. Indeed, as seen below, President Obama is the most moderate Democratic president since the end of World War II, while President George W. Bush was the most conservative president in the post-war era.

[SiriuslyLong]

Obama Socialism Redux: Barack Obama's Alleged Marxist/Socialist Leanings

Obama and Socialism charges: it all started with Joe the Plumber
Charges that Senator Barack Obama is a socialist have been bandied about for weeks, and have intensified this week as new information becomes available. It all started with Joe the Plumber who tossed out that socialism word after asking the presidential candidate if his proposed tax plan would cost him more if he bought a plumbing business. When answered in the positive, and followed up with the now infamous "spread the wealth around" remark by Barack Obama, Joe Wurzelbacher said it sounded a lot like socialism to him. As reported in the NY Post, Obama told Joe Wurzelbacher that "It's not that I want to punish your success... I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too." He then qualified his statement with, "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." With that comment, conservative jaws dropped and hit the floor.

Bill Ayers just won't go away: Unrepentant domestic terrorist... and Marxist too

As if that 'spread the wealth around' comment wasn't enough to fuel the socialism fire, Barack Obama was already linked to some unsavory characters, such as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, husband and wife members of the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist group from the 1960s. The National Review and other media make mention of Barack Obama launching his political career at a gathering in the Ayers' home. Meanwhile, Barack Obama refers to Bill Ayers as simply "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." Sarah Palin has accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" which met with Obama offense and claims he didn't know Ayers all that well, making Ayers sound like a neighbor he didn't know very well at all. However, ten years ago, Barack Obama's glowing review of Bill Ayers' book appeared in the Chicago Tribune, a copy of which can be viewed on the World Net Daily site. Ayers even went so far as to mention Barack Obama by name in his book, not surprisingly referring to him as a neighbor. Obviously, Obama was a neighbor who either read the book and gave an unrepentant terrorist a favorable book endorsement or one who never read the book and provided an endorsement to someone he didn't know very well under false pretenses. Bill Ayers - just a guy in his neighborhood - said in 2002: "I'm as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist."

2001 Radio Interview: 'Redistribution of Wealth' smacks of Socialism

As I reported earlier this week, 2001 audio from a radio interview has surfaced in which Barack Obama discusses "redistribution of wealth." While talking about what Barack Obama perceived as a failure of the Warren Supreme Court during the Civil Rights Movement, Barack Obama said, "But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society." As if past socialist remarks hadn't raised eyebrows far enough, this one raised them sky high. Barack Obama's socialistic comments can be interpreted to mean that while the Court did a fair job at civil rights in that blacks were no longer segregated, etc. it didn't do any legislation from the bench to redistribute the wealth of our nation, a tragedy in his eyes.

Read about his college days toward the end: http://voices.yahoo.com/obama-social...t-2124401.html

[SiriuslyLong]

Here's the 2001 Radio Interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkpdNtTgQNM

[SiriuslyLong]

And here is why he needs to go.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Pajamasmedia?v=xWmsoAP-HoE

[SiriuslyLong]

Socialism vs Corporatism

By Ron Paul

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.

Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single-payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges.” Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.

Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.

To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President's agenda.

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President's policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term — corporatism — forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.

Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.

http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/4650/Obama

socialist, marxist, corportatist?????????????? Choose one, it doesn't matter.

[SiriuslyLong]

Socialism, Marxism, Communism & Obama

Must see video with all the damning facts about YOUR president.

http://obamaism.blogspot.com/

Here's more -

To tell this story, Kurtz also has to take us through recent history of the American Socialist movement itself, from the crack-up of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late 1960s through the ideological struggles between the radical Weathermen and NAM factions, on the one hand, and the Democratic-Socialist groups that sought incremental change. The former advocated direct action and confrontations leading to revolution based on an alliance of radicalized Blacks supported by Socialist activists and an “awakened” middle class. The latter felt the United States was not in a pre-revolutionary state (the failure of the government to collapse after Nixon’s resignation stunned many SDSers), and that the best way to advance Socialism was to work through organized community groups (sound familiar?) and sympathetic politicians to pressure corporations from below and above. Changes would be gradual and would involve both creating entitlements that would be hard to take away, and “non-reforming reforms,” that would purport to fix a problem while actually making it worse and, eventually, precipitating a crisis that would make the American people open to Socialist solutions. The infamous Cloward-Piven strategy is one example.

It is this latter faction that became dominant and in which, according to Kurtz, Barack Obama found a home.

Kurtz traces two threads that converge in Chicago: the rise of Socialist-dominated community organizations and Barack Obama’s intellectual awakening as a community organizer that lead him from New York to Chicago. The former covers community organizing’s origins as a largely Socialist profession and takes us through both well-known groups, such as ACORN, and more obscure (outside of the Socialist community) ones, such as the Midwest Academy and UNO of Chicago. We encounter Socialist activists who are nearly household words these days -Bill Ayers, for example- and others who are influential behind the scenes, such as Greg Galluzzo, Harry Boyte, and Heather Booth. All of these and more became part of Obama’s network as a community organizer and a rising politician. He benefited from their connections, and they later benefited from the money and influence he could funnel their way as a board member on several foundations and as a state senator.

The other thread traces Obama’s intellectual development. Kurtz touches on his teenage association with Communist Party member Frank Davis in Hawaii and his open Marxism-Leninism at Occidental College, but focuses on his introduction to the combination of Socialism and community organizing at the two or three Socialist Scholars Conferences he attended while a student at Columbia University, and on his exposure tothe Black Liberation Theology developed by James Cone, which lead him to… Chicago and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Read the whole thing here:

http://pubsecrets.wordpress.com/2010...ical-in-chief/

[SiriuslyLong]

Here's the 2001 Radio Interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkpdNtTgQNM

I wonder if Hava-gafa-kasha listened to this??

[SiriuslyLong]

Al Sharpton admits Obama = Socialism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s8UJ...feature=relmfu

Well?