As far as 'true socialism' goes, there has never been a successful example of it on any sort of a large scale beyond just a few people. Human nature gets in the way. And that won't change, any time in the near future. Greed, power, control...

True socialism fails in the presence of these. At least market capitalism, while it may not be a totally perfect system, works better the more widespread these are.

I would suggest we look at the work being done by Chavez, Morales and Kirchner among others, as they lead their South American countries out of the crushing poverty imposed upon them by the market capitalists.

The main opposition socialism faces is the "greed, power, contol..." exercised by those who stand to lose their vast fortunes and privileges.

---

I do not fight fascists because I think I can win.
I fight them because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges

A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

As far as 'true socialism' goes, there has never been a successful example of it on any sort of a large scale beyond just a few people. Human nature gets in the way. And that won't change, any time in the near future. Greed, power, control...

True socialism fails in the presence of these. At least market capitalism, while it may not be a totally perfect system, works better the more widespread these are.

I would suggest we look at the work being done by Chavez, Morales and Kirchner among others, as they lead their South American countries out of the crushing poverty imposed upon them by the market capitalists.

The main opposition socialism faces is the "greed, power, contol..." exercised by those who stand to lose their vast fortunes and privileges.

Kirchner: President of Argentina May 2003 - Dec. 2007. Born: Feb. 25th 1950. Died: Oct. 27th, 2010. A somewhat lukewarm socialist, if at all.

Or, did you mean his wife (and successor to the presidency)? Anyway, they somewhat enriched themselves, by a factor of 7, between 2003 and 2009. I smell greed and corruption.

Morales: President of Bolivia 2006 - present. Coca grower. In fact, head coca grower of Bolivia. This involvement with the drug trade, right there and in and of itself stamps him with a great big 'CORRUPT' stamp.

Chavez: President of Venezuela 1999 - present. Shoved through a referendum eliminating presidential term limits in 2009, thus allowing himself to be president-for-life. Corrupt. In addition to nationalizing foreign businesses, he even nationalizes native Venezuelan businesses belonging to his political enemies. Corrupt. He has tried to 'help' the poor by running a national chain of stores selling the basic necessities at subsidized prices. This has not been successful, as that chain's stores are frequently out of basic staples. Inept. The wealth produced for Venezuela by its oil business goes toward things like military spending, not infrastructure building or programs helping the poor, as he promised. Liar. Do I need to keep going? Nope.

So, your list of three 'heros' of yours falls flat on its face. There are plenty of other politicians in South America that you could point to that do not involve this.... ineptitude, moral failure, and corruption. There are plenty of other politicians in South America who have not utilized greed, power, and control to enrich themselves at the expense of their countries and fellow citizens.

Try again, but vet your list a lot more carefully this time.

I wish beyond All Hope, The Experiments in Socialism are a resounding success.

Then The Peoples of The World will want to make these Countries their destinations of choice when wanting a change from Governments not inclined to their benefit.

How I dream of The Good 'Ole USA not to be innundated ever again with Peoples hoping for a Better Life. Our Country where People rise in Standards of Living due to their Competencies.

Yes, please succeed Socialism. Let The People live, work, and pursue Happiness not due to their Abilities, but due to the fact of being born and having breath.

We here in The USA will then have our breath again. The Sweet Breath of Purple Mountains Majestic.

iWorm 'em.

your house of commons would be similar to our house of representatives, your house of lords more akin to our senate. Your prime minister would be similar to our president. We kind of rejected the royal aspects, rather abruptly a couple of hundred years ago, though we have some tycoons that would love to replace them.

We also have a supreme court that is supposed to make sure that the laws passed by our congress are not in conflict with our constitution. Appointments are made for life by the sitting president. And yes there can be political games in obtaining those appointments.

We do have an electral college system in counting up votes that can skew the results. This is out-dated and although common sense would dictate it should be abolished, such changes are venemously opposed by whichever party would lose more at that particular point in time.

We have discussed the democratic and republican parties..

we also have the Libertarian party, a party that would like to severely limit government

The Tea party (did we not handle that in Boston?) who grew off as an extreme wing of the republican party, wanting to impose their religious perspectives on the rest of the country, and if they did come to power we would have one of the most repressive societies since the 1950's.

At the far left is the green party. Eager to move towards environmental reasonableness, usually lacking strong candidates, favoring legalization of marijuana.. it seems they forget to vote a lot.

There is some crossover between republican and tea, and libertarian and tea.
greens often vote democratic just because there is really nothing else available.

It used to be the Senate was two party. One republican, one democrat from each state. In recent years, I am still trying to figure out what, and why changed.
oh yes. In case of a tie in the senate, the Vice president casts the tie breaking vote.

---

Janice

Guy, the Tea party only wants to follow the parts of the constitution it likes.
It will quickly stomp on civil rights, religious liberty(freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion) and the pursuit of happiness by anyone not living a life style their "god" dictates. Of course it is amazing how many know him so well that they know what god wants.

So I completely disagree that the T-party wants to defend the constitution and all it stands for. The Tea Party would rain havoc on anyone holding different personal ideals.

I will agree they CLAIM to want to go"back" to the constitution. The reality is we never left it, and we are still working on getting the government back on track where they have crossed the line.

---

Janice

Guy, the Tea party only wants to follow the parts of the constitution it likes.
It will quickly stomp on civil rights, religious liberty(freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion) and the pursuit of happiness by anyone not living a life style their "god" dictates. Of course it is amazing how many know him so well that they know what god wants.

So I completely disagree that the T-party wants to defend the constitution and all it stands for. The Tea Party would rain havoc on anyone holding different personal ideals.

I will agree they CLAIM to want to go"back" to the constitution. The reality is we never left it, and we are still working on getting the government back on track where they have crossed the line.

Which T party? There seem to be dozens of them and they don't seem to be under any umbrella. Looks like anyone can claim to be the official T party and a whole bunch have. I don't think any of them have even registered as a political party as in having a slate of candidates on the ballot. T faction might be an apt description.

---

Guy, the Tea party only wants to follow the parts of the constitution it likes.
It will quickly stomp on civil rights, religious liberty(freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion) and the pursuit of happiness by anyone not living a life style their "god" dictates. Of course it is amazing how many know him so well that they know what god wants.

So I completely disagree that the T-party wants to defend the constitution and all it stands for. The Tea Party would rain havoc on anyone holding different personal ideals.

I will agree they CLAIM to want to go"back" to the constitution. The reality is we never left it, and we are still working on getting the government back on track where they have crossed the line.

Which T party? There seem to be dozens of them and they don't seem to be under any umbrella. Looks like anyone can claim to be the official T party and a whole bunch have. I don't think any of them have even registered as a political party as in having a slate of candidates on the ballot. T faction might be an apt description.

and all of them seem mad as hatters as far as I can tell.

---

Reality Internet Personality

Amendments:

Change Senate to 3 Senators from each state, same 6 year term, one up for election every 2 years, but have those elections in the years when the Congressmen don't have an election. I'd also like to see the Senate elected by the State Legislature as it was before the 17th and with a bit of a super majority as well to help force center leaning people into the office.

Make the Legislative a tri-cameral system. The third branch will only have the power to repeal laws. Two from each state. This one is a Governor's appointment, but a majority of the statewide elective officers have to agree. His first appointment is a day short of him being in office two years and the second is the day before his term ends. (Might have to force four year terms for Governors) That way he has to live with the guys the last governor appointed. Again hopefully makes them a bit more center. As to how this repeal works, if the President agrees the law goes away, if the President "vetoes" then the law goes to the house/senate to be re passed and if it fails there it goes away.

Require every law to have a sunset date. This forces inadvisable stuff and old junk to go away and makes the current bunch of scoundrels accountable. Not sure what to set as the maximum sunset date, presently the only example is the two years for funding the military. Perhaps six years the same as a Senate term. The repeal house to examine all sun setting laws and recommend to the other houses, keep or die.

SCOTUS: Presently Scalia is making enough of an ass of himself that there needs to be a way to get rid of such a fool, short of impeachment. But I don't want it political at all. So upon written recommendation of 3/5 of the other Justices they can remove a member for incompetence, dishonor to the court, or crimes committed in office. 3/5 is 6 of the 9. I'm hoping it wouldn't be used lightly, but one never knows. I'd also like to add in some of the medical unfit language from the 25 for the president just because we don't need an Alzheimer's justice. In the other branches they are big enough to have one or two crazies not cause damage and so far we have been lucky.

---

and all of them seem mad as hatters as far as I can tell.

I believe the madder they are the more press they get.

Unfortunately it isn't about facts any more, but about how many eyes you can attract for ad $$$$.

---

Side note...
Chris: as you can see this "Tea Party" has polarized the nation. As for its originations it came primarily from the far right republican party and Faux news service.

---

Janice

We got the same thing from Ross Perot almost 2 decades ago. He had a plan too. Make him king and give him all the tax breaks. Sounds all to familiar

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

your house of commons would be similar to our house of representatives, your house of lords more akin to our senate. Your prime minister would be similar to our president. We kind of rejected the royal aspects, rather abruptly a couple of hundred years ago, though we have some tycoons that would love to replace them.

We also have a supreme court that is supposed to make sure that the laws passed by our congress are not in conflict with our constitution. Appointments are made for life by the sitting president. And yes there can be political games in obtaining those appointments.

Yes, nominated by the president with "advise" from the senate. The nine supreme court justices usually vote 5/4 on any issue brought up to them these days, which is scary.

We do have an electral college system in counting up votes that can skew the results. This is out-dated and although common sense would dictate it should be abolished, such changes are venemously opposed by whichever party would lose more at that particular point in time.

This system was created to try to prevent a pure democracy, which has failed every time it has been tried in history. Absolutely no common sense in abolishing it. Thank God whenever someone tries to abolish it, the other side says not right now. I think our founders did this on purpose.

We have discussed the democratic and republican parties..

we also have the Libertarian party, a party that would like to severely limit government

The Tea party (did we not handle that in Boston?) who grew off as an extreme wing of the republican party, wanting to impose their religious perspectives on the rest of the country, and if they did come to power we would have one of the most repressive societies since the 1950's.

I disagree the Tea party is extreme. Wanting to follow the constitution is not extreme. There are provisions on changing the constitution. If the constitution is wrong, we need to change it IAW the rules. We've done it before, we can do it again. This is not extreme.

At the far left is the green party. Eager to move towards environmental reasonableness, usually lacking strong candidates, favoring legalization of marijuana.. it seems they forget to vote a lot.

There is some crossover between republican and tea, and libertarian and tea.
greens often vote democratic just because there is really nothing else available.

It used to be the Senate was two party. One republican, one democrat from each state. In recent years, I am still trying to figure out what, and why changed.
oh yes. In case of a tie in the senate, the Vice president casts the tie breaking vote.

Our U.S. Senators used to be elected by the state legislatures, who are popularly elected. Again, this was a buffer from a pure democracy, which has failed every time it has been tried in history. The 16th amendment changed it to popular elections. This was one of the first steps in the federal government seizing power and control away from the state governments. It was a bad move, but since it was done *properyly*, I'm willing to accept it.

And, yes, about the only duty our vice president has is to act as president of the senate, and be the tie breaker vote if applicable. Otherwise, he does not vote. Nothing else. Except if the president is no longer able to serve, then he becomes president.

Being a conservative is not extreme. We just want to play by the rules. Without rules, everybody does what ever they want and anarchy and chaos follows.

OK, there is a reason why the founding fathers designed things in the US Constitution the way they did. It is all about checks and balances and the separation of powers. That is to say that power was distributed among several different groups with competing interests so that power could not be concentrated and turn us into a tyranny.

Between independence and the drafting and adoption of the Constitution, the US was under the 'Articles of Confederation' (AoC). This system had a fatal flaw, too much power was in the hands of the States. So, a faction hijacked a convention called for the purpose of amending the AoC, and pushed our current Constitution through.

Under the AoC, the national government was essentially powerless due to lack of ability to directly tax. Furthermore, all functions of government were concentrated in the legislative. There was no executive branch independent of the leadership of the legislative. The states basically did as they willed, and the national government could do nothing about it.

Now then, under the Constitution, (as those in the US should be familiar with due to their education), power was divided up into 3 branches at the national level: legislative, executive, and judicial. What might not have occured to a lot of people is that state governments and the people are also part of the mix. Tyranny is a bad thing. Everything was split up as it originally was to prevent tyranny by any group.

The federal legislative branch was split up into 2 branches. The lower house was directly elected by the people. Constitutionally, the lower house (the House) had the exclusive power to initiate tax legislation. By tradition, but not by the Constitution, they also initiate spending legislation. This makes the Speaker of the House, not the President, the most powerful politician in the USA. Furthermore, the House functions as a Grand Jury in cases of misdeeds by governmental officials (they have the power of Impeachment to decide if allegations against an official merit a trial).

The upper house (the Senate) has the constitutional duties of confirming appointments to the executive and judicial branches, ratification of treaties, and functioning as a judicial court in cases of misdeeds by governmental officials (trying of impeachments).

The 2 legislative branches also are a check and balance on both each other and the states. The House is given numbers of members from each state based on state population. This favors the interests of larger states. The Senate is given 2 members from each state. This favors the interests of the smaller states.

The constitution guarantees a Republican form of government to the nation. It also guarantees a Republican form of government to the states. This insulates government from the people (thus negating the evils of direct democracy). But, it does make government responsible to the people. Don't like your current crop of politicians? Vote them out next election.

The original Constitution had, at the national/federal level, the House is directly elected by the people, The Senate was appointed by the State Governments, and the President was elected by the State Legislatures. Yes, let me repeat it. The National executive branch was elected by the States' legislative branches. Traditionally, each state holds a popular election to determine how that state's legislative branch votes for President, but this is not Constitutionally required.

The People directly vote for their representatives in The House, where most of the power in the National Government is, anyway, especially power over domestic matters. The State Governments determined The Senate and The Presidency. But then, The People directly vote for the State Governments. It is just another level of insulation between power and either the evils of Mob Rule of Direct Democracy, and the Tyranny individuals and groups trying to concentrate power in their own hands.


As has been mentioned, The Senate was changed to being directly elected by a Constitutional amendment, but I regard this as a bad move. Also, I regard any attempt to make the Presidency directly elected. It removes part of the Constitutional safeguards against Tyranny and Mob Rule. I am in favor of the restoration of the original Constitutional system for choosing Senators, the President, and the Vice President. The original system was rather finely balanced, and things started going wrong in this country in a big way when we messed with it.

Guy, the Tea party only wants to follow the parts of the constitution it likes.
It will quickly stomp on civil rights, religious liberty(freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion) and the pursuit of happiness by anyone not living a life style their "god" dictates. Of course it is amazing how many know him so well that they know what god wants.

So I completely disagree that the T-party wants to defend the constitution and all it stands for. The Tea Party would rain havoc on anyone holding different personal ideals.

I will agree they CLAIM to want to go"back" to the constitution. The reality is we never left it, and we are still working on getting the government back on track where they have crossed the line.

Which T party? There seem to be dozens of them and they don't seem to be under any umbrella. Looks like anyone can claim to be the official T party and a whole bunch have. I don't think any of them have even registered as a political party as in having a slate of candidates on the ballot. T faction might be an apt description.

The Tea Party. Heh...

The various Tea Party factions are an attempt by some in the Republican Party to co-opt both the remains of the somewhat defunct US Constitution Party (which fizzled... It was itself an attempt by the Republican party to co-opt the Libertarians) and the Libertarian Party, cloaked in a patriotic sounding name.

While I applaud their emphasis on Libertarian principles, the various Tea Parties are still loyal to the Republicans, which means they can't be trusted. The Tea Parties are, as has been said, somewhat to the far Right.

Libertarians are really somewhat centrist in outlook, not siding with either the Right or the Left. We just say that it isn't Government's place to meddle with much of what it is currently meddling with.

We could be termed right-wing only in our opposition to the concentration of power in the Government to accomplish left-wing goals... But then, by the same token, we could be termed left-wing due to our opposition to the concentration of power in the Government to accomplish right-wing goals.

It is the concentration of power itself that we oppose, for that way is Tyranny.

We got the same thing from Ross Perot almost 2 decades ago. He had a plan too. Make him king and give him all the tax breaks. Sounds all to familiar

Urgh. As crazy as the 'Little Ferengi from Texas' was, he was right about one thing...

NAFTA (and similar things)... A giant sucking sound...

We got the same thing from Ross Perot almost 2 decades ago. He had a plan too. Make him king and give him all the tax breaks. Sounds all to familiar

Urgh. As crazy as the 'Little Ferengi from Texas' was, he was right about one thing...

NAFTA (and similar things)... A giant sucking sound...

He missed. The sucking isn't from Mexico and Canada but coming from India and China.

---

We got the same thing from Ross Perot almost 2 decades ago. He had a plan too. Make him king and give him all the tax breaks. Sounds all to familiar

Urgh. As crazy as the 'Little Ferengi from Texas' was, he was right about one thing...

NAFTA (and similar things)... A giant sucking sound...

He missed. The sucking isn't from Mexico and Canada but coming from India and China.

Thats why i said 'and similar things'....