moved to the right??? Lol

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http://www.BHOCOUNTDOWN.com



"A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers." -Ronald Reagan

No, they won't, and the idea is not to have "negative effects on business," but to stop corporations from using the government to screw over everyone else.

Exactly. What I would expect leading up to the 2012 election (unless Obama comes to his senses pronto) is the emergence of a strong left-leaning third-party candidacy. This will force Obama to move left, or lose enough votes to the third candidate to throw the election to the GOP. That's exactly what happened with Roosevelt in '36, and resulted in the Second New Deal -- the one that actually made a difference and wasn't a giveaway to corporate interests.

But you're perfectly fine with government screwing everyone. Awesome dude!

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Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of it's stated intent.

No, I just don't believe that "government" and "screwing everyone" are synonyms.

Agreed, and ironically enough, countryboy's whining notwithstanding, it was FDR that saved "capitalism" from itself. The Left supported Roosevelt because he adopted the rhetoric of the socialist, communist and labor parties. That's what brought the New Deal into being, and that's what staved off what looked to be a socialist revolution at the time.

It's absolutely ironic that countryboy wails about the destruction of "free-market" capitalism, when it was a fairly liberal Democrat that saved capitalism.*

*Free-market is not necessarily synonomous with capitalism. The former is compatible with socialism, while the latter is only self-sustaining by corporate wealth and power for a priviliged elite.

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We are supposed to be the government, and we are held accountable. Huge multinational corporations? Meh, not so much.

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Yeah, according to Karl Marx, who coined the term "capitalism", as a pejorative for free markets.

FDR did not "save" capitalism. It was the end of some of the Raw Deal....er....New Deal policies during WWII, that pulled us out of the economic morass, caused by the Great Depression.

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Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of it's stated intent.

The markets wern't totally free even then, indeed Britian and the Empire was very protectionist at that point. The term, I believe was coined by Adam Smith (I may be wrong about that). The two are very different concepts, one being an economic system and another an element of trade between nations.

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Free-market capitalism is actually an oxymoron. In order to have capitalism, you have to have government intervention in the market on the side of capital formation and against the interests of labor.

When capitalist sympthizers decry interference with the "free market," what they really are objecting to is government interference on the side of labor, against capital. As long as the interference is on the side of capital, in their view it doesn't count as interference.

its gone from -5 to -8 today, prezbo down to 30%

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

But I'm not a Marxist and I don't follow his teachings. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (in Europe) and Josiah Warren (in the US) developed the anarchist tradition of socialism complete with a free-market (they both came to pretty much the same conclusion without even knowing each other). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "Mutualism" formed the basis for what is called "Market Socialism" or "Free-Market Socialism."

Huh? This is like saying the earth doesn't revolve around the sun. It turns empircal evidence on it's head, or dismisses it outright in order to keep one's worldview in a safety bubble. You need to stop watching Fox Noise.

Anyway, unlike you, I like to bring evidence to support my assertions, so please feel free to see the following provided by Hoover Institution:

How FDR Saved Capitalism
By Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks

During the economic crisis of the 1930s, many expected a socialist revolution. The revolution never came. Why? The man in the White House co-opted the left. By Hoover fellow Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks.

[snip]

The politics of the 1930s furnishes us with an excellent example of the way the American presidential system has worked to frustrate third-party efforts. Franklin D. Roosevelt played a unique role in keeping the country politically stable during its greatest economic crisis. But he did so in classic or traditional fashion. He spent considerable time wooing those on the left. And though many leftists recognized that Roosevelt was trying to save capitalism, they could not afford to risk his defeat by supporting a national third party.

Co-opting the Left

If the Great Depression, with all its attendant effects, shifted national attitudes to the left, why was it that no strong radical movement committed itself to a third party during these years? A key part of the explanation was that President Roosevelt succeeded in including left-wing protest in his New Deal coalition. He used two basic tactics. First, he responded to the various outgroups by incorporating in his own rhetoric many of their demands. Second, he absorbed the leaders of these groups into his following. These reflected conscious efforts to undercut left-wing radicals and thus to preserve capitalism.

Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated his skill at co-opting the rhetoric and demands of opposition groups the year before his 1936 reelection, when the demagogic Senator Huey Long of Louisiana threatened to run on a third-party Share-Our-Wealth ticket. This possibility was particularly threatening because a “secret” public opinion poll conducted in 1935 for the Democratic National Committee suggested that Long might get three to four million votes, throwing several states over to the Republicans if he ran at the head of a third party. At the same time several progressive senators were flirting with a potential third ticket; Roosevelt felt that as a result the 1936 election might witness a Progressive Republican ticket, headed by Robert La Follette, alongside a Share-Our-Wealth ticket.

To prevent this, Roosevelt shifted to the left in rhetoric and, to some extent, in policy, consciously seeking to steal the thunder of his populist critics. In discussions concerning radical and populist anticapitalist protests, the president stated that to save capitalism from itself and its opponents he might have to “equalize the distribution of wealth,” which could necessitate “throw[ing] to the wolves the forty-six men who are reported to have incomes in excess of one million dollars a year.” Roosevelt also responded to the share-the-wealth outcry by advancing tax reform proposals to raise income and dividend taxes, to enact a sharply graduated inheritance tax, and to use tax policy to discriminate against large corporations. Huey Long reacted by charging that the president was stealing his program.

President Roosevelt also became more overtly supportive of trade unions, although he did not endorse the most important piece of proposed labor legislation, Senator Robert Wagner’s labor relations bill, until shortly before its passage.

Raymond Moley, an organizer of Roosevelt’s “brain trust,” emphasized that the president, through these and other policies and statements, sought to identify himself with the objectives of the unemployed, minorities, and farmers, as well as “the growing membership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Norman Thomas’ vanishing army of orthodox Socialists, Republican progressives and Farmer-Laborites, Share-the-Wealthers, single-taxers, Sinclairites, Townsendites [and] Coughlinites.”

Destroying the Third-Party Threat

Beyond adopting leftist rhetoric and offering progressive policies in exchange for support from radical and economically depressed constituencies, President Roosevelt also sought to recruit the actual leaders of protest groups by convincing them that they were part of his coalition. He gave those who held state and local public office access to federal patronage, particularly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York, where strong statewide third parties existed. Electorally powerful non-Democrats whom Roosevelt supported included Minnesota governor Floyd Olson (Farmer-Labor Party), New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia (American Labor Party), and Nebraska senator George Norris (Independent), as well as Wisconsin governor Philip La Follette and his brother, Senator Robert La Follette Jr. (both Progressive Party).

This strategy had an impact. In 1937, Philip La Follette’s executive secretary told Daniel Hoan, the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, that a national third party never would be launched while Roosevelt was “in the saddle,” because Roosevelt had “put so many outstanding liberals on his payroll [that] . . . any third party movement would lack sufficient leadership.” The president told leftist leaders that he was on their side and that his ultimate goal was to transform the Democratic Party into an ideologically coherent progressive party in which they could hope to play a leading role. A few times he even implied that, to secure ideological realignment, he personally might go the third-party route, following in the footsteps of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt.

Franklin Roosevelt ran his 1936 presidential campaign as a progressive coalition, not as a Democratic Party activity. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has described Roosevelt’s tactics as follows:

As the campaign developed, the Democratic party seemed more and more submerged in the New Deal coalition. The most active campaigners in addition to Roosevelt—[Harold] Ickes, [Henry] Wallace, Hugh Johnson—were men identified with the New Deal, not with the professional Democratic organization. Loyalty to the cause superseded loyalty to the party as the criterion for administration support. . . . It was evident that the basis of the campaign would be the mobilization beyond the Democratic party of all the elements in the New Deal coalition—liberals, labor, farmers, women, minorities.

Roosevelt was reelected by an overwhelming majority in 1936. Yet his second term proved much less innovative than his first. This was due, in part, to several Supreme Court decisions during 1936 striking down various New Deal laws as unconstitutional and the president’s subsequent inability to mobilize popular protest against the Court. Reacting to a perceived shift in the public mood to the right, particularly from 1938 on, Roosevelt substantially reduced his reform efforts. The change, however, did not lead to a loss of leftist support. The Communist Party, following its Soviet-dictated Popular Front policy, actively opposed efforts in a number of states to create independent radical anti-Roosevelt political campaigns. Sounding like a moderate liberal group, it increased its membership, formed large front groups, and generally expanded its influence in the labor movement.

[snip]

Much more at link provided.

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I was just about to mention that... The new graph is

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http://www.BHOCOUNTDOWN.com



"A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers." -Ronald Reagan

As Ive said before, polls are 100% accurate. Everyone in this country agrees exactly with the 1000 people asked over the phone at dinner time.

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

Not when you discount the fact that higher polls in that aggregation are old (by 1-3 weeks)

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane