Ever desperate, John McCain has lately taken up an attempt to re-brand Barack Obama from blue to red. Obama, it seems, is a stealth "socialist." Or, so says Sarah Palin, or Joe the Plumber, or John McCain, or was that Bill O'Reilly? Remember now we are talking about a political crowd dedicated to "preemptive war" - they know something when they do not see it. Or, as Don Rumsfeld so eloquently termed it, Barack Obama being a socialist is a "known unknown."

Unfortunately for the McCain campaign, a large chunk of the American electorate, despite eight years of presidential idiocy, has managed to retain some amount of rational reasoning. By any reasonable measure Obama is far from a socialist. Let's look at three.

Healthcare
In his Chicago days, Obama was close to a socialist position on the issue of healthcare. He was an early supporter of House Resolution 676, a bill introduced by Representative John Conyers which would create a single-payer national healthcare system. This bill would effectively eliminate the private health insurance industry. While many socialists support this proposal, we also call for a fully socialized healthcare system where both the healthcare program and facilities are publicly owned.read more »

An old Hawaiian proverb states “O ka makapo wale no ka mea hapapa i ka pouli” (only the blind gropes in the darkness). As the Wall Street meltdown spreads into the Hawaiian economy, the island’s business class and Republican Governor are doing their fair share of groping. The state’s extreme reliance on the tourist industry makes it one of the most vulnerable regions to what is quickly becoming a global recession. Couple this with the free-market ideology of Governor Linda Lingle and Hawaiian residents are faced with the very real prospects of a painfully deep recession.

Historically, the islands’ business class has transitioned from one monocrop economy to another. Sugarcane production peaked in the 1970s and has registered consistent declines from a high of 1.2 million tons produced to 200,000 in 2006. Pineapple production has also contracted from 680,000 tons in 1987 to 188,000 in 2006. A collapsing plantation economy was substituted for a dependence on tourist revenue which now accounts for nearly 25% of Hawaii’s Gross Domestic Product. Tourism dependence has fastened the Hawaii's economy to the now declining fortunes of both North American and East Asian economic zones. (National Agriculture Statistics Service, 2/7/08)read more »

On the eve of the election, let me post a socialist view of this race. I watched the final debate
with a friend, and it was clear to both of us that Obama had won, if only because McCain had
so clearly lost. Obama was calm, while McCain was an old and angry man.

Barring some remarkable shift in the polls, Obama has won the campaign, very possibly by
a landslide. I've been chided with an email from a fellow radical because I don't view McCain as
a war criminal, and that is an interesting part of the McCain campaign that is worth a look.
War is a crime, no matter who, when, or where. It was Sherman who said, of his march through
Georgia in our Civil War, "war is hell". General Omar Bradley said, after World War II,
"Aggressive war is a crime. But defensive war is also a crime. The problem is sometimesread more »