Can You Hear Him Now?

"Obama's not a socialist, Atom. Socialists want to control the means of production."

Two words: General Motors.

"He's not a communist, Atom. Communists don't believe in private property."

Answer to Joe the Plumber: "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

"He's not a runaway statist, Atom."

But here we have:

"Looking back at the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, Obama said that the Supreme Court had focused on “court-imposed remedies regarding segregation and voting rights.” But, he went on, “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in society.”

The Supreme Court, Obama went on, “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.” And, thus, the Court “wasn’t that radical.”

At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement never “put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Since I'm poo-poohed when I call him a socialist, and since no one is allowed to call anyone a communist anymore, after today I'll simply call him a

While saying, “it’s one option among many,” he also said, “What I’ve said is, and I have stuck to this claim, I don’t want to see additional tax burdens on people making $250,000 a year or less … I think that ultimately, what we’re going to have is a package which will probably include some additional revenue from well-to-do people, including me and you, who can afford to pay a little bit more so that working families, people who are going to their job every single day, can have a little more security on their health care.”

“Isn’t that, in effect, punishing the rich?” Vieira asked.

“No, it’s not punishing the rich,” Obama replied. “I think the way I look at it is that if I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that’s part of being a community.”

take-your-money-and-give-it-to-someone-else-ist. Maybe that will be clear enough for folks.