Well, recently I researched the connection between environmental ethics and economy - they have amazingly much in common, but going through all the econimc theory that explained how a cost benefit analysis worked to evaluate the intrinsic value of something like a meadow or forest was tiring. At least the text was in english and so the style was enjoyable. Angloenglish scientific writing is alot different from german scientific writing. Here, you have to use complicated language and technical terms, and the more difficult it is to read the more of a scientist you appear. Texts have long complicated sentences filled with technical terms to explain completely banal and mundane contexts and connections, and everything has to be deadly serious, no humour allowed.

I thought it was the other way around - most jobs require experience and are highly specialized. That is the problem if you have unskilled workers - they don't qualify for the job.

How much more can an economy grow if you already have everything?

Its not THESE statements that are communist. "equality, national pride and standing strong" are meaningless buzzwords.

1. Their actions are communist, they past laws which follow communist ideaology. Calling it "equality, national pride and standing strong" doesn't change it being communist

2. They make statements such as "spreading the wealth" and when baited, even "from each according to his means to each according to his needs".

If you are a republican and say mainstream republican things (ex: I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman) you would be accused of hate speech and be barred from ever being a teacher, or having any of your books used in schools. Oh, and when GM was nationalized and started closing dealerships? they were targeting dealerships whose owners are republican.

Your example was that if you were an approved member of the party you could not:

1. Publish books - While you could still publish books in the USA, those books will never be used in a classroom.

2. Be a teacher - that is currently the case in the USA. I constantly hear praise of obama during college lectures from half my teachers (physics class, biostatistics class). The other half keeps their mouth shut, so they are either republicans, independents, or democrats who think I am actually there to learn about science and not liberalism.

3. Be a profession - that is the same as a teacher... unless you were seperating K12 teachers from college teachers... in which case you should know that it is even WORSE in K12 system as far as liberal propaganda.

4. Run your shop - The government nationalizes things left and right, they are specifically taxing banks and other businesses they dislike, they close down shops (of car dealers) whose owners are the wrong party after having nationalized the car companies.

 

Your example is terrible because all those things you said already happen and just serve to illustrate how wrong you are.

Bottom line: everybody is able to publish.

Your claim about a liberal nazi like dictatorship doesn't hold up because  you would already be in prison, and sites like this wouldn't work at all, a lot like it is in China today. Anybody in a public function who had a different oppinion from the official propaganda would at best lose their jobs or be in prison or at worst just disappear. The only freedom you would have is to feel free to shut up and do as you're told, and you would probably have a civil war already because all those out there who are fervent advocates of the 2nd ammendment would take up arms and defend their rights against government oppression. I don't actually think a dictatorship would work in the US for that reason - american mentality just doesn't compute with being oppressed.

I feel like you (and others who claim this) trivialize the horrors and totality of nazirule with your comparison. As a matter of fact, your pathos has alot in common with the style the NSDAP used in their propagandacampeigns against whomever group they wanted to exterminate.

Bottom line is that both liberals and consevatives are able to accuse each other and fight like alleycats in blogs or radioshows or TVshows and any other media because the US is anything but communist.

Prisoncamps for undesirable political opponents, intellectuals etc. were around since year 1. They were among the first things that were established. A concentration camp is not automatically equal to a deathcamp, even though distinguishing here seems awful as thousands of people died in "regular" camps as well.

The other half would be unemployed or in said prisoncamps. I haven't heard of uncontrolled nationalization where the goal was to control private business of political opponents and banks and even the whole car industry. The latter wouldn't even make sense as they are bankrupt. What would they want with a bottomless moneypit like that? I heard it differently in the news here, even though one could argue about the necessity to save and substitute an industry that has no customers just in order to save the jobs. But saving jobs was the goal of all that, not government controll - or that is how it was reported in the news here.

The point of departure for Hitler in January 1933 was very different from Obama's in January 2009. Comparing it is not insightful in any way. Hitler used the force of the SA and SS to beat up, arrest and even kill parliament members in the beginning to get the vote he wanted. He also staged a terrorist attack to dissolve civil liberties and habeas corpus rights in March 1933. I have yet to hear about liberal measures that parallel Hitlers in his very first half year of office alone.

How's that for EARLY nazi rule? Conservative bitching and moaning about Obama's nazimethods is very amusing when you actually compare what happend in the last stages of the Weimar Republic and the first year of Hitler's rule in 1933 to the first year of Obama's administration. Why don't you go to the history department of your library the next time and do some research instead of listening to populist and declamatory radioshows and/or TVshows that claim to be politically informe. There are many actual examples based on facts and documents available in historybooks that have nothing whatsoever to do with emotions.

Well, he is starting with his "national Police Force".  A force he envisions to replace the military.

Germany in 1933 was a nascent democracy, and of course America in 2009 is a 200+ year old one, so it will take longer if we allow it.  The key is in the last phrase - if we allow it. And one way of "allowing" is to ignore the warning signs.  The first shot has been fired.  We need to stop it before it reaches a conflagarion.

Indeed.  But its jurisdiction is somewhat constrained, apparently more than BO would like.

BO's call for a domestic police force 'as strong as our military' was always a bit strange & unlikely to go anywhere, but not inconsistent with his political philosophy and desire for centralized/nationalized control of everything.

Look at present day Venezuela for a metamorphose of democracy into socialism and tell me how that isn't supposed to happen. Sure the US isn't Venezuela, but it clearly illustrates what is possible when there are those willing.

You not hearing about it doesn't surprise me, try more reliable sources of news. It happened. I suggest you go through the archive on my blog, and on draginols, and leukis, they all have links to various news stories as they broke.

You can also start here: http://www.nakedemperornews.com/

And in an interview he and his advisors mentioned that they want to introduce mandatory civil service at 18 like in europe, with the obama force being one of them... It is amazing what you can find in old videos of politicians.

PS. everyone in germany believed it could never happen to them either.

That is a very big misconception.  bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears.  It does mean a resstructuring, so some people lose their jobs - which happened anyway (both declared bankruptcy).  What did happen because of Obama is that the normal process was circumvented so that millions of people lost billions of dollars (not even including the American Taxpayer).  Bond holders were deprived of their money when in most normal bankruptcies, they would have gotten some money.  And of course Obama then dictated everything the companies did - from what they could pay their top executives, to what cars they made.  Obama did not call it nationalization, but it quacked, swam, and waddled like a duck.  So it did not take a genius to figure out it was a duck.

Ford was the only company that refused to bite the poisoned apple.  And guess which company is now riding very high?

Yes it was.  Clearly neither the bank TARP or the Auto money did any good other than to allow the government to dictate policy.  Banks still went out of business, GM and Chrysler still went bankrupt, and millions still lost their jobs.  So what was the purpose of the money other than to gain control of the businesses?  The Banks (that are able) are paying back the money as fast as they can, and still declaring billion dollar losses.  Why?  To get out of the control of Obama.  Yet now he is trying to change the rules and say "if you ever took", not "if you have now". 

I hate nazi comparisons, but this one is very appropriate.  When Hitler was subtly taking over parts of Europe, was he telling the world "This is my first land grab"?  No, he was saying "this is my last land grab".  And clearly the former was correct, the latter was a lie.  So if you listen to Obama, you notice the same thing.  he says one thing, and does another.  More so than most politicians.  They lie during the campaign and then break promises.  Obama just lies all the time.

Again incorrect.  Most presidents would have passed a real stimulus package, but any honest person will tell you that the one Obama passed was pure pork, and not stimulus.  They thought they could pass the pork and that the recession would be over soon anyway, and of course it was not (proof is in the fact that in the first year, only 17% of the money was spent).  So unemployment would have gone to 10% with another president not nationalizing half the US economy - if they had passed a real stimulus as well - but it would be falling now, not waiting for the double dip.

There is no paranoia with the word social.  We all are social.  We live in a social society.  We socialize.  But socialism is about as social as a knife in the back, and there the paranoia comes in.  Socialism dictates that the fruits of your labor are the government's first and they then allow you to keep what they think is best.  Capitalism clearly is different.  You keep the fruits of your labor, but pay the government for maintaining social order.  Clearly Germany is not soclalist by their stated definition.  But in practice, they are approaching it.  As are most western democracies, the US included.  As Margaret Thatcher said "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.".  Indeed, Obama ran through all the money very quickly and has basically nothing to show for it.

Aren't all prisoners of war (or otherwise) held against their will? This has to be the worst statement about Gitmo I've ever heard, but I'm not surprised by the type of thinking behind it, as even the US media makes it appear that way. The truth is people were not scooped up arbitrarily and sent there, they had a personal choice in the matter (by picking up a rife or planning an attack). They do no work (forced labor), the conditions are better than many US prisons. It is NOTHING like a concentration camp. Perhaps you'd like them put up at the local Hilton? Even well meaning comparisons, exasperate the issue needlessly. 

Easy with the horses. It is quite possible to describe it as such if you squint or just use facts without context that are convenient for your argument. I disagreed with the comparison in my post.

Enemy combatants appears very loopholish to me - either you are an enemy in a war, then you have soldiers who become prisoners of war, or you aren't - and then you have civilians. Picking up a rifle and planning an attack sounds very military to me, but I am no expert. "Encamping" civilians with disregard to their habeas corpus and constitutional rights to satisfy national security issues is illegal in the US and many other places around the world. Creating a third group to avoid being bound to existing law is fishy- it isn't even a loophole, more like a sleazy lawyeresque trick.

I realize that there is a dilemma when faced with an asymetrical threat like terrorism because you have criminal fanatical civilians who pose a military threat on a large scale with acts of terrorism like 9 11, and there is no precedence for that. Maybe Guantanamo had been a necessity in the years after 2001, but it is up to the legislature to deal with that new set of problems and to define and work out the necessary laws within the legal framework of the constituion.

I didn't know that military tribunals allow for detainees to be detained for months on end, even more than a year, before they have their tribunal.

I don't want to start a debate about military tribunals or enemy combattants and the rest of it. I still find it fishy, but that's my personal pov. I don't really think about the whole issue very often because Cuba is far away from Germany and the issue isn't very present here. All the different implications of the military commission act from 2006 for the tribunals themselves, for jurisprudence and legal philosophy are interesting when I hear about them, but that's just curioucity.