I found the pamphlet What is Democratic Socialism? Questions and Answers from the Democratic Socialists of America. You might find it to be a little different from what you expected.

Here is the introduction:

Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.

Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States. Because of this, many false ideas about socialism have developed in the US. With this pamphlet, we hope to answer some of your questions about socialism.

The short article Stop Digging: The Case Against Jobs provides a completely different way to look at our economic situation.

I’ll give you the conclusion, and leave as an exercise to the reader to read the logic that leads up to  it.

John Maynard Keynes famously observed that “If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths … and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again … there need be no more unemployment”. One of the things that ought to distinguish socialists from liberals is that we think it’s possible to do better than this. Today, it seems that hole-digging has come to occupy a central place in the imagination of the left. But socialism should be about freeing people from wage labor, rather than imprisoning them in lives of useless toil.

The Raw Story article Credit union flap may reveal Goldman Sachs is bullying community banks provides a link to the video below.

When it was announced recently that Goldman Sachs had withdrawn its sponsorship of the small community bank at which Occupy Wall Street had set up an account for its donations, it appeared to be merely a petty act of vindictiveness.

According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, however, the motivations go much deeper and may involve that Goldman Sachs is misusing TARP bailout funds as a “political weapon” to bully smaller banks.

Watch the video to the end to catch the sign.  I think it is in English, but the words don’t seem to match the actions we see in the video.

The story Republicans Cry Uncle On Spending … When Cuts Hit Home on Talking Points Memo starts with the following paragraphs:

It took months of fighting — the threat of a government shutdown, the graver threat of a default on the national debt, and now a new threat of major, automatic cuts to Medicare and defense programs — but Congress’ deficit obsession has finally exposed the rarest of all species: Republican Keynesians.

With just a under a month until the deficit Super Committee must recommend policies that cut the 10 year deficit by $1.2 trillion, members of the Republican party — the same party that’s been on the war path for deep spending cuts, and that decries President Obama’s “failed stimulus” — are making uncharacteristic arguments against slashing spending. Trim too much, too quickly, they warn, and people will lose their jobs!

Call them Defense Keynesians — GOP members who represent defense interests, veterans, service members, contractors, and others whose livelihoods would be impacted by deep cuts to defense spending. They don’t want the Super Committee to cut much more, if any, from defense, and they certainly don’t want to pull the so-called “trigger” which would cut defense across the board by about $600 billion starting in 2013, if the panel gridlocks.

They laughed at the flippant comment that John Maynard Keynes is reported to have made that if you couldn’t find anything better to spend stimulus money on, you could keep people employed by just having them dig holes and then fill them up again.  What is it when you spend billions of dollars to employ people to build bombs and guns?  Don’t they just dig holes?  Then you hire people to repair what the others you hired blew up.

There must be some better way to spend the money.  What if you didn’t hire people to blow things up, but put those people to work fixing infrastructure?  Also the people you used to have to hire to fix what was blown up could instead work on building new things.

Instead of destroying future generations, you could  keep the teachers employed teaching our next generation of innovators and builders.

I cannot understand why the Republicans would want to run this video ad.

So they have figured out just what it is about Elizabeth Warren that makes us want her for our Senator so much.

You wouldn’t think they would want to let any more people know that haven’t already figured this out.

More evidence, if you needed it, that the Republicans are completely out of touch. They think there is still a market for their snake oil remedies.

It’s funny how the repeated mention of Socialism by modern day Republicans has finally made me want to read more about it. So far I have found that the Republican party of Abe Lincoln was founded on socialist ideas by avowed socialists.

I have just finished reading Chapter Two “A Broader Patriotism”: Thomas Paine and the Promise of Red Republicanism from the book The “S” Word: A short history of an American tradition… Socialism. I guess they don’t call them red states for nothing.

We in Massachusetts have tried “Bambi” aka Scott Brown. We are tired of the caught in the headlights look. Bring on the “Matriatch of Mayhem”.

In the article New TV ad rips Jean Quan: “Stop the police brutality” (VIDEO) on The San Francisco Chronicle web site, they show the video below:

I am expecting an email from MoveOn.org any moment now so I can sign a petition.

The Raw Story article Olbermann interviews roommate of Iraq veteran injured in Oakland provided the video below.

Notice in the video some description of the “violence” that “provoked” the police.

The Raw Story article Olbermann: Oakland mayor must fire police chief or resign provides a little background for the included video below and the transcript I quote below that..

“But if one night a group of peaceable protesters exercising the rights given to them in the Constitution — and not rights made up by the cops, for the cops, like lawful command and imminent threat — if they are attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the mayor’s only comments are to commend the police chief for a ‘generally peaceful resolution to the situation’ and after that claim ‘democracy is messy’ after the unprovoked actions of those police horrify a nation, she is endorsing and assuming for herself the responsibility for whatever havoc the out of control police officers have wrought.”

The Raw Story article Maddow compares ‘Occupy Oakland’ to 1930s ‘Bonus Army’ protest provided this video from MSNBC.