The US sold it's freedom and way of life last november!

[Praeothmin]

Even with Obama's overtures the Cuban regime has no intentions of doing any kind of business with the US other than to collect whatever money is sent their way to sustain their regime. Why would anyone sane even want to support such a regime?

AFAIK, Obama hasn't lifted the economic embargo, he has said he was willing to allow movement of family members to and from Cuba.
So the US aren't interested in doing buisiness with Cuba either...

A Regime that brought the world closer than ever than any other one to Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis.

Riiight...
So, the US had every right to put missiles in Turkey, on the USSR's doorstep, but the USSR, Cuba's allies, had no right to defend themselves...
Nice.
If the US hadn't put missiles in Turkey, there wouldn't have been Russian missiles in Cuba...

Other than Obama who just got slapped in the face by the regime he is also getting slapped by just about every terrorist organization, criminal syndicates (the mob) in the face of this planet.

And your facts for this affirmation are... what?

The US for quite a while had a system of checks and balances called Antitrust law. the law was supposed to protect against monopolization and th creation of oligarchies and while properly enforced it did just that but in the last few decades the Antitrust law's noose was laxed to the point that it became virtually null. As a result Monopolization and Oligarchies raised their ugly faces stifling competition and little by little drowning what up till then had been a vibrant, healthy and competitive capitalist system.

This law is an excellent example of a controlled economy.
As you say it yourself, when the law started to get ignored, thus when the economy stopped being controlled, that's when the crap hit the fan.
We do agree on this case it seems... :)

I do not believe for a second the stats on Cuba's economic growth

Well, cold hard facts that disprove these figures would go a long way to sway us to your point of view, don't you think?
In the meantime, I think I'll believe the numbers as presented...

what makes Puerto Rico better and infinitely so is the fact that we are free and they are not!

We completely, totally, indubitably agree on this point.
I belive a free (at least as free as possible) country is leagues better then a country where people are fully controlled by a one-party goverment.
But, Punkmaister, a controlled Capitalist system is leagues away from communism... :)

No quiero te molestar Punkmaister, yo sé que estas orgulloso de Puerto Rico, y esta bueno, pero esta importante que te acuerdas que hay otros opiniones que estan buenas tambien, aunque estan diferentes de los tuyos (perdon me espanol, le hablo solamente desde los dos anios pasados)...

[Narsil]

They also call tend to have an alternative name for this 'controlled capitalism' system; it's called democratic socialism. The operative word being democratic.

[PunkMaister]

AFAIK, Obama hasn't lifted the economic embargo, he has said he was willing to allow movement of family members to and from Cuba.
So the US aren't interested in doing buisiness with Cuba either...

That is just the first step, the sanctions will probably be lifted gradually rather than all at once. Not that it will matter a damn anyway...

Riiight...
So, the US had every right to put missiles in Turkey, on the USSR's doorstep, but the USSR, Cuba's allies, had no right to defend themselves...
Nice.
If the US hadn't put missiles in Turkey, there wouldn't have been Russian missiles in Cuba...

Turkey was and still is a NATO member so naturally they were under the nuclear detterent umbrella of the charter. And actually you are oversimplifying things. The reasons the USSR did what it did are that despite their early space mission successes they were behind in their ICBM technology in comparison to the US/NATO so they were desperately looking for a way to close the gap so naturally when Castro offered his island as a staging area for Soviet mid-range and short range missiles it was an offer too good not too refuse, plus they were dealing with a yet untested administration and president whom they thought off early on as a weakling, Kennedy off course proved them wrong all the way but that came latter. I know quite a bit about history! Fidel also had reasons to ask and allow nukes into his country, earlier that year or the year before the US had attempted a failed Coupe with the infamous Bay of pigs invasion by Cubans trained by the US. Fidel was weary and also he wanted payback, big time! When the crisis was over and the missiles were dismantled Fidel was furious that the Soviets were taking the nukes away. He was probably half tempted to try to forcibly take them but knew it would have been political as well as physical suicide! The catch phrase among the PCC (Cuban Communist Party) after that was "Nikita mariquita lo que se da no se quita!"

Anyway the point os it was Fidel who invited the Russians to bring their nukes into Cuba which precipitated the crisis.

And your facts for this affirmation are... what?

HAMMAS has slapped Obama in the face.

The Somali pirates have slapped Obama in the face.

AlQaida and the Taliban have slapped Obama in the face.

This law is an excellent example of a controlled economy.
As you say it yourself, when the law started to get ignored, thus when the economy stopped being controlled, that's when the crap hit the fan.
We do agree on this case it seems... :)

It wasn't controlled as in having overseers monitoring everything you do. It simply kept anybody from maintaining an unfair share or total control of a market. Let's be clear what we have now should not even be called Capitalism. Oligarchies and Monopolies do not equal Capitalism! Why? Because for Capitalism to work it needs Competition! You see if somebody has total control of a market say Hot dogs or Pork based products etc) then whoever runs it has no incentive to make a good product or anything like that because it does not really matter as they are the only game in town where as where they have competitors they have the incentive not only to make a good product but to try to make it better and so on. without competition the economy cannot move forward period.

Imagine just how infinitely bad McDonald's and Burger King would be if they were owned by the same people instead of being competitors. And we are talking the bottom of the fast food chain here...

Over here some people have monopolized the selling and distribution of Propane gas for example. Even though is many companies all this companies are in fact owned by one individual and thus is all smoke and mirrors and there is no competition going, prices are just as high on Propane gas no matter where you go! Did I mention already I hate monopolies? (monopolies only belong in the game board)

We completely, totally, indubitably agree on this point.
I belive a free (at least as free as possible) country is leagues better then a country where people are fully controlled by a one-party goverment.
But, Punkmaister, a controlled Capitalist system is leagues away from communism... :)

Did I mention I am very skeptical of Utopian I'll give you the moon in a silver platter politics?

As I said I much prefer a return to how Antitrust law was properly enforced than to have overseers looking over the shoulder of every free enterprise tinkerer out there!


No quiero te molestar Punkmaister, yo sé que estas orgulloso de Puerto Rico, y esta bueno, pero esta importante que te acuerdas que hay otros opiniones que estan buenas tambien, aunque estan diferentes de los tuyos (perdon me espanol, le hablo solamente desde los dos anios pasados)...[/quote]

Not bad at all!

They also call tend to have an alternative name for this 'controlled capitalism' system; it's called democratic socialism. The operative word being democratic.

Yes which is Cristal clear that you are not when you derided one of the very founders of such an idea Mr George Orwell. You seem to constantly resort to dishonest tactics to try to win arguments but is not going to work with me.

[Narsil]

Yes which is Cristal clear that you are not when you derided one of the very founders of such an idea Mr George Orwell. You seem to constantly resort to dishonest tactics to try to win arguments but is not going to work with me.

Actually, I like Eric Arthur Blair, and I greatly admire him. I just don't admire the way people constantly misinterpret Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was very much against a Stalinist regime. People (much like you) just take the whole wrong message from the sort of work he did; he was avidly against authoritarianism, and not against Socialism itself. Notably, he was quoted as having said;

'The only régime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a Socialist régime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer - that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a Socialist party.'
-The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell

Actually being a writer myself, I tend to take a similar stance.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I may don't like Obama, I may think he's making fools of us all, but at least, when it comes to jokes, he delivers them well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1olxLwBWI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVzworH30s

As for the Cold War. It never stopped.
If Russia "triggered" a crisis with its Cuban missiles, just check out how the country is being nifty encircled with generally newly NATOed East-European countries getting bases and "defense" systems built there.
Thin shell eggs.

[PunkMaister]

I may don't like Obama, I may think he's making fools of us all, but at least, when it comes to jokes, he delivers them well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1olxLwBWI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVzworH30s

As for the Cold War. It never stopped.
If Russia "triggered" a crisis with its Cuban missiles, just check out how the country is being nifty encircled with generally newly NATOed East-European countries getting bases and "defense" systems built there.
Thin shell eggs.

Mr O the cold war was an ideological one of Democracy/Capitalism vs Communism/Authoritarianism that atmosphere no longer exist, Russia and NATO countries have done joint military exercises together which was unthinkable in the cold war.. In fact the US, the EU and Russia want to see if they can create the vaunted SW missile defense system to protect their nations against missiles from rogue states and so on. Things are not the same at all, unless Russia does a 180 or turns rabidly nationalistic with expansionist dreams of conquest a la Command and Conquer I do not foresee any problems...

[Mr. Oragahn]

I may don't like Obama, I may think he's making fools of us all, but at least, when it comes to jokes, he delivers them well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1olxLwBWI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVzworH30s

As for the Cold War. It never stopped.
If Russia "triggered" a crisis with its Cuban missiles, just check out how the country is being nifty encircled with generally newly NATOed East-European countries getting bases and "defense" systems built there.
Thin shell eggs.

Mr O the cold war was an ideological one of Democracy/Capitalism vs Communism/Authoritarianism that atmosphere no longer exist, Russia and NATO countries have done joint military exercises together which was unthinkable in the cold war.. In fact the US, the EU and Russia want to see if they can create the vaunted SW missile defense system to protect their nations against missiles from rogue states and so on. Things are not the same at all, unless Russia does a 180 or turns rabidly nationalistic with expansionist dreams of conquest a la Command and Conquer I do not foresee any problems...

The Russia is certainly not the super massive block it once was, but what's occurring nearby Russia and the way there are battle fought here and there to force countries to cut links to Russia and allow US bases to be installed, or the creation of new, or control of current oil ducts, tells another picture.
Plus I don't know how it's going in the US, but in Europe, the demonizing of the Russian regime is relentless, in the sense that there rarely are any good thing to say about it.
What happened in South Ossetia and the case of Russian and US fleet parked a few kilometers from each other have, for a good number of reasons, raised considerable tensions between both countries, and some analysts were clearly worried things could go wrong very quickly.
Officially, the CW is warmer and over, but behind the scenes, it's less quite glamorous.

[PunkMaister]

The Russia is certainly not the super massive block it once was, but what's occurring nearby Russia and the way there are battle fought here and there to force countries to cut links to Russia and allow US bases to be installed, or the creation of new, or control of current oil ducts, tells another picture.
Plus I don't know how it's going in the US, but in Europe, the demonizing of the Russian regime is relentless, in the sense that there rarely are any good thing to say about it.
What happened in South Ossetia and the case of Russian and US fleet parked a few kilometers from each other have, for a good number of reasons, raised considerable tensions between both countries, and some analysts were clearly worried things could go wrong very quickly.
Officially, the CW is warmer and over, but behind the scenes, it's less quite glamorous.

Really? Over here Radical Islam is the bogeyman and rightly so but Russia? Not really not over here anyway and when I say over here I mean the US in general If I were to be referring locally then or would be far more mundane yet tangible problems such as Drug addiction, Crime Domestic Violence and so on...

May I ask why are the Russians being demonized in Europe? Is it similar in how you for example demonize the US and most western and capitalist countries for that matter? Could it be because Russia is becoming more and more capitalist and less and less socialist/communist?

[Mike DiCenso]

HAMMAS has slapped Obama in the face.

The Somali pirates have slapped Obama in the face.

AlQaida and the Taliban have slapped Obama in the face.

How so?
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

That is just the first step, the sanctions will probably be lifted gradually rather than all at once. Not that it will matter a damn anyway...

We'll have to wait and see before we can make any kind of judgement...

The reasons the USSR did what it did are that despite their early space mission successes they were behind in their ICBM technology in comparison to the US/NATO so they were desperately looking for a way to close the gap so naturally when Castro offered his island as a staging area for Soviet mid-range and short range missiles it was an offer too good not too refuse, plus they were dealing with a yet untested administration and president whom they thought off early on as a weakling, Kennedy off course proved them wrong all the way but that came latter. I know quite a bit about history! Fidel also had reasons to ask and allow nukes into his country, earlier that year or the year before the US had attempted a failed Coupe with the infamous Bay of pigs invasion by Cubans trained by the US.

Well, from what I have been able to find, the USSR had 300 missiles to the 5000 NATO ones, so bringing 40 more to Cuba only helped a little.
And the US did precipitate this with the "Bay of Pigs" affair.
But there are some who say that the USSR may have forced acceptance of these missiles from a reluctant Castro in order to eventually have the missiles in Turkey retired.
So while the missiles in Turkey were not the direct reason (they'd been there for a while), they wer still in the USSR's mind, and may have played a role in the affair as well...

Anyway the point os it was Fidel who invited the Russians to bring their nukes into Cuba which precipitated the crisis.

Which seems disputed by some analysts and historians...
See here:

Arthur Schlesinger, historian and adviser to John F. Kennedy, on National Public Radio on October 16, 2002, concluded that Castro had not wanted the missiles but that Khrushchev had forced them upon Cuba in a bit of political arm-twisting and "socialist solidarity."

From this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

HAMMAS has slapped Obama in the face.

The Somali pirates have slapped Obama in the face.

AlQaida and the Taliban have slapped Obama in the face.

As mike said, we'd like some examples of this, but I would add that they all pretty much ignore everyone else as well, not just Obama...

It wasn't controlled as in having overseers monitoring everything you do.

Neither is the Canadian or UK economy.
We simply have a few more rules that allowed us to surf the current crisis a bit better because of all our economic failsafes.
I agree entirely with your point that competition is needed for an economy to flourish, that you cannot put everyone on the same level, that there needs to be some incentive for hard workers to continue to perform, and that an almost-free market is good.

Basically, all three of us, you, me and Narsil agree that there must be some controls and legislations to oversee the economy, we simply disagree on how much control is needed...
(And you and Narsil also diagree on how to call that kind of system) ;)

Did I mention I am very skeptical of Utopian I'll give you the moon in a silver platter politics?

Did I mention I do not believe a single word uttered by our Politicians?
:)

[Narsil]

Since when have any of us ever said that the system of socialist democracy is 'utopian'?

Utopia is not even remotely feasible, as it would actually fully require us to be in a post-scarcity economy, which is more or less a science fiction dream on the same levels as Star Trek and the Culture, and would require at least the former level of technology to achieve. By current physical knowledge, such technology actually can't exist. Do you know what utopia actually translates to? 'No place.' It's a play on words, as 'eutopia' (which is pronounced more or less identically) would translate to 'good place'. Gotta love Greek.

Anyway, we aren't proposing a utopian system. We're proposing a system that is not fundamentally broken.

[PunkMaister]

OK maybe I'm not making myself clear enough so maybe some big letters will do? Here it goes:

Monopolies and Oligarchies do not equal Free Enterprise! Get it? Why not? Because once one bozzo or a few bozzos control a whole market, it is then he/she or they who call all the shots and to hell with everyone else! That is not free enterprise, anyone that says such a thing is free enterprise is full of Shite!

There hopefully that will get the message across of what Free Enterprise really means...
I do not believe in "Big Brother governments" heavily bureaucratized and politicized we have had plenty of that here in the form of how welfare management and health reform management is run. The current administration in in fact looking for a way to cut down on bureaucracy although I don't think firing government employees by the thousands is the way to go. Freezing positions that are unnecessary would be a good thing though. But all administrations only think and go by partisan lines big surprise there huh?


Here are more examples of Socialized medicine vs the US health system and a shining example of why we should never institutionalize a "Big Brother" type of government such as the one Obama and the Demos are vying for!

Two Women - Free Market Cure Film Series

Uninsured In America

Moving Minutes - The Lost City - "Saxophones!"

Enjoy! :D

In regards to Obama:

http://www.alternet.org/audits/121882/t ... ghanistan/

[Narsil]

In the UK, there is optional premium health insurance which you can pay for, so your first video is rendered null at least in my case. The second is also rendered null and void due to that, due to the fact that it talks about private health care, which we actually have in the UK as a valid alternative to the free health care. What's the difference? Less waiting, and more in the way of personalisation, as well as access to some more expensive treatments. It also provides care homes and other such, though doesn't cover most of the standard treatments which are available through the NHS anyway.

Your argument is rendered null in this instance.

[PunkMaister]

In the UK, there is optional premium health insurance which you can pay for, so your first video is rendered null at least in my case. The second is also rendered null and void due to that, due to the fact that it talks about private health care, which we actually have in the UK as a valid alternative to the free health care. What's the difference? Less waiting, and more in the way of personalisation, as well as access to some more expensive treatments. It also provides care homes and other such, though doesn't cover most of the standard treatments which are available through the NHS anyway.

Your argument is rendered null in this instance.

If they do then why Barbara Walters had to go through Socialized medicine hell instead of just being taken to a private institution?

And you are missing the point Narsil. The point is even though you genuinely want a Social democracy there is plenty of other socialists who have other plans which is what scares the living daylights out of me. Who is to say that at some point you won't find yourself in such a situation because some socialist bureaucrat who thinks he knows better does away with all private health care and insurance as Canada did? Don't you see how slippery that road is?

[Narsil]

If they do then why Barbara Walters had to go through Socialized medicine hell instead of just being taken to a private institution?

Two notable things, before I continue; she got treated, and her situation is something I have never encountered while going to a hospital. On the other area of things, did she pay for a private institution? No, she chose to go through the British healthcare method.

And you are missing the point Narsil. The point is even though you genuinely want a Social democracy there is plenty of other socialists who have other plans which is what scares the living daylights out of me. Who is to say that at some point you won't find yourself in such a situation because some socialist bureaucrat who thinks he knows better does away with all private health care and insurance as Canada did? Don't you see how slippery that road is?

Don't you see how fallacious that fallacy is? The fact is that the United Kingdom has had socialised healthcare since the NHS was founded over sixty years ago. We have not done away with the privatised healthcare in that time, and we most certainly will not do away with it in the near future; we are not going to 'do a Canada' and get rid of BUPA. Mostly because it's the sort of thing that would lose someone an election (oh look, modern democracy works again). Though I myself have never paid for private healthcare, because I've always actually been very poor, only recently having been able to move up the very outdated class ladder and escape from the bottom rung.

Your slippery-slope fallacy does not apply to the United Kingdom. Shut up.