Went to lunch with Doc the other day (at the time of this writing; now several days ago.) I really tried not to get into politics, but, of course, the conversation shortly turned to that, and next thing you know, there I am jumping up and down with the tinfoilhat on, yelling at posters and signs and anything else in sight.
In the course of our conversations and multitude of tangents, one thing I said involved "the socialist policies of the Republicans these days", or "Republicans these days are Socialists." Something along those lines.
I'd like to list a few of the policies and programs that I consider socialist.
I suppose that at some point I'll have to give a real definition of what socialism is, and what socialist programs mean. For the time being, I'll put it as government control or ownership over economic issues.
- Medicare prescription drug plan -- that's probably about the third step towards socialized medicine
- Farm subsidies -- those sure aren't conservative
- Steel tarriffs -- okay, to be fair, those are more mercantilist than really socialist. Still, it seems that the steel industry is a 'favored industry', that 'needs' protection.
- Faith-based initiatives -- let's get religious organizations dependent on the government
4 out of 5 of these can be seen as just trying to buy votes. Two of them match up very nicely with things that the communists of old liked -- get the farmers and the workers both to like you. It doesn't matter to me why they're done, be it buying votes, or making the federal government feel like they're doing something. It's still wrong, we know that federal control over industries is bad and will make them hemorage money.
I also don't want to pay more in taxes because the government has decided that the farm industry or steel industry is the favored place of the day because of former politicians lobbying for special priviliges.
3 more days and then all this election crap will be behind us....phewww. Until then: http://www.electoral-vote.com/
I prefer uselectionatlas.org -- it's a bit more conservative in assigning tossup/slight one or the other (in the sense that it's a lot less likely to call a state for one or the other, if the difference between them is within margin of error or undecided.)
Also, the really interesting thing on election night will be this timeline, which will show the count at various times, when the polls close in each state, etc. It will be very slick as it fills up. I'd expect we won't get a clean result by Wednesday morning, though.
Meh, though, it's the Communists or the Fascists...
Rampant Fraud.
The worse part of the steel thing is that it didn't help. A bunch of mills still went out of business. Now the chinese aren't dumping steel anymore and there isn't enough production to go around.
Protectionist trade policies seldom (if ever) help who they claim to.
I just realized I spelt worst wrong.