Rainbow Farm Field Illinois wallpaper
Jonah Goldberg wanted to be taken seriously as a conservative intellectual so he wrote a book called “Liberal Fascism” riddled with lies, inaccuracies, half-truths, distortions and to be redundant, sloppy research. I wouldn’t say that no one liked his book. Other conservatives who regularly deal in historical revisionism seemed to love it. Having been hammered for what appears to be a career of turning out right-wing tripe for the right-wing tripe eaters, did Goldberg have a moment of reflection and redemption? Of course not. One paragraph from a new column and so much propagnda, What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama?
Fourteen months into his presidency, in March 2010, Obama succeeded in muscling through Congress a partial government takeover of the national health-care system. That legislative accomplishment followed Obama’s decision a year earlier, without congressional approval, to nationalize two of the country’s Big Three automobile companies. In the intervening months, he had also imposed specific wage ceilings on employees at banks that had taken federal bailout money—the first such federal wage controls since an ill-fated experiment by Richard Nixon in 1971. Obama also made the federal government the direct provider of student loans, and did so by putting that significant change in American policy inside the larger health-care bill. In a September 2009 press conference, Obama suggested that a publicly funded health-care system might help “avoid some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs”—thus mistaking the act of making money, the foundational cornerstone of capitalism itself, with the generation of unnecessary expenses.
Given his conduct and rhetoric as president, we have every reason to reopen the question from 2008 and ask, quite simply, What kind of socialist is Barack Obama?
This is the kind of paper one might expect from an over zealous 12 year old. based on the thin gruel, lies and bullpoop provided – we the jury are to find the defendant guilty of some kind of socialism. Jonah once again plays the plausibly rational card – oh you know Obama isn’t Stalin, but a purveyor of a soft socialism that is incredibly dangerous.
*The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is not even close to a government take-over of health-care. The general outline of the plan is very similar to the one drawn up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and previously endorsed by one of the GOP front-runners for president in 2012, Mitt Romney. So the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney are also socialists by Goldberg’s definition. Private health-care corporations like tea bagger Rick Scott’s remain privately owned entities – maybe Rick can rip off health care reform for another billion. Health insurance companies remain private and will benefit from the anticipated 30 million new policies they’ll write. Conservatives have taken credit for some of the health care reform bill here and here – they too are socialists by Goldberg’s standards. Some of the ideas in the PPACA were put in at the suggestion of Republicans – maybe that makes Obama only half a socialists and those Republican only half socialists.
*Obama “nationalized” the two auto makers? That would be the nationalization initiated by the Bush administration and Bush appointee Ben Bernanke. As talks were underway for assistance during the Obama administration prominent right-wing conservative shock jocks were blaming the possible lack of assistance on the unions. The government took an equity state in GM and Chrysler as collateral against government loans. You know, so tax payers would get their money back if either company had to be sold off whole or in pieces – which sounds a lot like capitalism. There are/were some good arguments for and against those loans, but being socialistic is not one of them unless you’re an maliciously ignorant rube who’s mom got him a job on the wing-nut welfare circuit. Jonah has all the integrity of his ilk, when you make a bet with a liberal while on winger welfare you don’t have to pay off when you lose. If bail-outs are always socialism than Reagan and Bush 43 were also socialists when they bailed out the savings and loan industry. A crisis brought about – much like the current recession – largely by Republican policies and corruption.
* Obama’s reform of the student loan program? Formerly a boondoggle of free money for banks that acted as intermediary leeches. That horrible reform saved tax payers approximately $70 million dollars. Money which banks made for lifting up their poor tired little hands and writing checks. In Jonah’s fetid view of reality this is just the kind of thing Mao would have done.
*Given his conduct and rhetoric as a right-wing nimrod, we have every reason to reopen the question and ask, quite simply, What kind of proto-fascist anti-American moron is Jonah Goldberg? I’m not saying that Goldberg is a Nazi or a Communist. It is just that so much of what he believes in and advocates resembles those totalitarian political schools of thought. I’m sure he is much nicer than Dr. Josef Mengele.
The Long Goodbye 