See, that's the thing - Bush was not a fascist, he wasn't even close to that. Likewise, I do not feel that Obama is remotely close.

Assuming that I'm correct in believing that you're saying Obama is become fascist like - I disagree. This comes across as the same paranoia and statements made by liberals during Bush's term of office.

Umm, try telling that to those who have actually lived in a communist country. I'm sure they will tell you that we're not at full blown communism.

~Alderic

Considering you got several good answers on your struggle, I hope your struggle is over but none the less I would like to give my "easy enough to understand a 5 year old can get it" reply just in case.

Had the Gov't not given the "incompetent exec" the money in the first place, they would have not had money to waste. Considering the Gov't was the real idiot here, firing someone who they have no real power over does not negate the fact that they were idiots for giving them money in the first place.

Tell me, if you go to a bank and get a loan to start a business but your business is failing, does the bank have the right to fire you? Keep in mind I did not say you were not gonna pay the loan.

I have to admit his comments were a bit exagerated, but keep in mind that for a country that's never been communist, anything even remotely close to being communist is as bad to us as actually going full blown communist. It's kinda how a poor person is use to having very little money while a rich person that all of a sudden found themselves in the same situation would go nuts.

you confuse "ruined by years of full blown communism" and "enacted communism".

We enacted communism, it will take some years for everything to collapse like it did in the USSR, and for the minutae of opressive rules to permiate every single aspect of society, but now that the rule of law and capitalism has broken down and we have a socialist banana republic it is only a matter of time. We crossed the line, obviously things are better than those who have been on the other side for years, but we will "catch up" with them.

I have plenty of experience with communism, many of my family or our family friends escaped it over the years.

True, but that still doesn't change the fact that we're still not communist. In fact, I read an article that was pretty interestiing.

No, not really. Either way they can tell you the consequences of so called communism (When in fact there is no legit example of true communism), and enacting it.

In fact, we're not close to it because in a communistic society:

• There is equality across the board. Do we have that? Nope. Will we have it? Unlikely, unfortunately.
  

• There are no classes: America will always have classes, even if you have redistribution of wealth, there are going to be those either in charge, or just higher in the pecking order - that will be better off. (It's like the concept of hypothetically taxing the rich, whereas the rich will lose money and may end up in a lower class. Subesquently, there will be someone to replace them, and so on so forth.)
  

• There is a stateless society: The USSR wasn't close to communism for largely this reason (among others). It is illogical to assume that the United States will head towards communism through a leader, because if he is the power hungry politician, he would lose power. Also, in a stateless society, there's no government. Last time I checked we still have a government. (I'm tempted to add tongue-in-cheek wise, "unfortunately...")

• Common ownership:  This area is where I might concede slighly. From what I've read, Obama is either not going to do this beyond limited necessity, or he will take it all over. It entirely depends on the source and bias.
  

Also, I think a snippet of a quote by Upton Sinclair is apt; he said, "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label..."

~Alderic

There has never been a "communist" country where there was equality across the board. EVER.

Ditto for the other arguments...

If you wanna wax semantic than fine, we are not communist, we are just acting like the USSR and china who called themselves communist despite not being true communism. Whatever you wanna call that. (common name is communism, a corrupt mostly socialistic nation by technical definitions)

I look forward to that philosophy being used on the government. 

• Department of Education
  
• "War on Poverty"
  
• Nancy Pelosi
  

Exactly, they were never were really communistic countries. In my opinion they were part dictatorship, part oligarchy, etc. They were working toward a communistic society, but had not yet achieved it.

I'm just stating the truth. If you're a communist country, then there are certain requirements.

~Alderic

It's certainly an interesting extension on the executive branch's powers. Historically economic decisions on the appropriate distribution of government assets (such as GM, which you recently bought a big slice of through the bailout) have been a matter for the legislature.

I'd say it's attracting less negativity because a) the head of GM is a noted idiot and people really want Obama to do something about the recession and no one has any real idea about what will work.

This is different to wire-tapping because, for example, 1984 and Brave New World are cornerstones of the Western ideas of totalitarianism and state control. We have no real analogues for nasty state control of the economy, particularly where it's because the free market has failed. As a result political radicals, who might value personal freedom, will support government interference to restart the markets despite ostensibly being economically liberal too.

Nope.  Social engineering of the market (manipulation of the market without understanding the consequences) failed.  Markets never 'fail' - they perform/behave/respond in accordance with the rules of the game.  If the rulemakers say 'We want you to fire up your engine, point your vehicle toward that cliff over there and step on the gas.  Don't worry, we guarantee your safety,' one shouldn't be surprised to see a fair number of vehicles at the bottom of that cliff.

The market, however, isn't the car, but the game itself. And the game failed to keep the car safe. We can argue about whether it was airbags, good directions or a lack of wings that was at the heart of it, but I think it's safe to say that the market - the game itself - didn't do much good when things went splat.

A better market would have done a better job of looking after long-term growth. This might or might not require more regulation.

Wrong, it was the legislatures who messed up the market in the first place.

blaming capitalism is bullshit. It was socialisitic bs like the "affordable housing" program that broke it.

If you go to a bank and get a loan to start a business, the business fails, and you go back to the bank for more money, they have every right to say 'ok we'll give you the money, but only if you let someone else run the business'.

What's done is done, there's nothing that can be done to change that - the bailout happened, and can't be reversed. However what can happen is that the government can still at least do some things better, such as forcing out the incompetant management if they ask for more money. Still not as good as just saying no to giving more money, but a lot better than giving them money for nothing. The arguments lately on these forums have been attacking the government for this though - with the implication that it would be better for the government to hand over the money with no strings attached than to give the money in return for new management.

It may be that some of those people wouldn't support the bail out in the first place, but the arguments that have been put forward have been focused against the government using it's position of power to force out the execs.

Blaming capitalism/the markets (in part) is what should happen, because they have failed. There's no getting around the fact that numerous companies operating under a profit maximising self-regulatory regime have failed spectacularly. Shareholders allowed the execs and other staff to have their rewards weighted in such a way as to encourage excessive risk taking, leading to the company pursuing loss-making activities because it was in the management's best interest.

The affordable housing program had little to do with the problem. It helped grow one of the things used to create financial products, sure, but that's neither here nor there. The real issue was that in a largely unregulated industry - as aeortar mentioned, there's not much regulation of derivatives and other even more exotic financial products - players in the market proved incapable of determining valuable goods from worthless ones. More than just failing to effectively assess risk, they actively helped to make extremely risky products a cornerstone of the financial system, so that when housing collapsed, the rest of the economy started to tank with it.

I doubt that greater regulation is the best solution, but I think governments are justified in being actively involved in the decision making processes of corporate entities they've bought a big stake in. While they could certainly do a worse job, you'd really have to hate democracy to think that the involvement of elected leaders and the system is definitely going to make things worse.

there WAS regulation, the affordable housing program had to REMOVE that regulation.

You are just tossing liberal slogans without any substance.