When hardline socialist parties gain power they tend to become more pragmatic. Such parties usually still consider themselves socialist and think of themselves as working toward eventual socialism.

The Socialist Party in France is a good illustration of this. Go back and look at the history of the Mitterrand presidency. In 1984 he abandoned nationalization of industry so that France would qualify for the European Monetary System. The subsequent collapse of the leftist coalition forced him to "cohabit" with Chirac's conservative RPR. Since then it'd be fair to characterize PS as a center-left party.

Technically a "socialist" is anyone who believes in "social ownership" of the means of production. A "communist" is someone who believes in the common ownership of the means of production. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but "social ownership" is a broader concept than common ownership. Common ownership is just one form of "social ownership". Worker cooperatives are another form of social ownership.

Logically then, all communists are socialists, and not all socialists are communists. Some communists see non-communist socialism as a desirable intermediate step toward communism, others do not. Some communist and socialist ideologies fit within the umbrella of "social democracy", others do not.

Socialists and especially communists tend to be idea-fetishists, and so often display a peculiar mania for mutual ideological excommunication.

Most "democratic socialist" parties are socialist (like the DSP in the US), or have at some point in their history been socialist, or at least see socialism as a desirable long-term goal. But I'm sure there are exceptions. What you really have to do is ask what someone *believes*, not what they call themselves.

Sanders has never run away from the word "socialist", but what he seems to believe in is a strong welfare safety net, labor unions operating in a market economy which allows private profit but with regulatory restrictions on the ability of private entities to externalize costs like pollution. There are plenty of people who would call that "socialist", but most people who just plain call themselves "socialist" wouldn't. What he wants is for the US to be more like "Nordic model" country such as Sweden or Denmark. Maybe that's not your personal idea of political paradise, but it's a hell of a long way from North Korea.

As to why Sanders would call himself a socialist, it may be that's what he calls "socialism", but I think it's because he's a contrarian and gadfly who likes to rile people up but excels at retail politics in a tiny, tiny state. I'm all for his preferred policies, but personally I think he'd be terrible president because he's a self-righteous political prig who'd alienate and undermine any of his allies that didn't toe the line.

Well to be fair the man calls himself a socialist; he's just wrong about that. You're spot on about the bailout though. It's like my Bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody really believes in socialism. Nobody believes in capitalism either. It's 'socialism for me, capitalism for you!'"

You are aware that budgets take effect the *following year*, right? The US fiscal year X starts in October of X-1.

The 103rd Congress was elected in November 1992, convened in Jan 1993, so they had input into the FY 1994 and FY 1995 budgets. In FY 1994 the federal deficit went down by 52 billion, and in FY 1995 the federal deficit went down by 39 billion. This means the deficit went down by about 20% in both the 103rd Congress/Clinton budgets.

But to be fair to George H.W. Bush the deficit was already coming down. After the deficit peaked at 290.3 billion in FY '92 , GHWB reneged on his famous "read my lips" promise and new taxes in FY '93 to reduced the deficit by about 12% to 255 billion.

Well, one thing about politics is that it occasionally serves up the wildly unexpected. But only occasionally. Sanders' views fall into acceptable range for the most highly partisan Democrats, but they're well aware they have to win votes outside the party base. They'd *prefer* Sanders to Clinton but most of them can live with Hillary -- the ones who can forgive her for voting for the Iraq AUMF bill that is.

As for having tried "Clinton", Hillary Clinton isn't Bill Clinton, any more than Jeb Bush is George W. Bush. If she were this election would be over. She's probably smarter and maybe even tougher than her husband, but she does't have the off-the-charts charisma.

This kind of reminds me of the interest Ron Paul generated a generation ago among some liberal-leaning voters.

Even if you're generally a straight-line party voter, if you have a brain you don't agree 100% with the party line. In a two-party system you have to make do with whatever centrist mush the least objectionable party is serving up. So when someone comes along who declines to squeeze himself into one or the other mold, he's bound to say a lot of things that people who really don't agree with him very much want to hear someone say.

He calls himself a socialist, but most self-avowed socialist wouldn't consider him one because he doesn't favor compulsory worker ownership, production for use, or any of the usual socialist agenda. He's basically what in Europe would be called a "social democrat" -- pro welfare and collective bargaining within a capitalist production system. He'd fit in with the old UK Labour Party or the contemporary Scottish National Party.

Well, to be fair he did want to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, which would have cut the deficit considerably. These were sunsetted when they were put into effect so that the Bush administration could claim minimal impact on long-term debt.

It was a deal with Congressional Republicans. Obama got a reauthorization and extension of unemployment benefits (this was in the Great Recession), an inflation adjustment for the alternative minimum tax so it wouldn't bite middle income people, an extension of the child tax credit and earned income credit. Congressional Republicans got an extension of Bush tax cuts on people making more than $250,000 and a reduction of the estate tax.

Basically when push came to shove, both parties preferred to kick the debt can down the road for a few more years. It may have even been the right choice at the time given the weak private sector spending. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no deficit hawks during recessions.

So he's for establishing a gulag, is he? Citations please.

And of course it's even a *better* deal for the USA. We get to govern the place, put our military on it, claim the adjacent territorial waters, tax the people who live there etc., in return for the symbolic pretense that we're doing it according to ethical and legal principles. That's the deal.

Occasionally the pretense of principle presents some minor restrictions on what we do, but in that very same grand scheme of things it's still a pretty sweet deal.

In the neighborhood were I grew up there was a row of houses that were built on a paper street that had yet to be built. All those houses were accessed via temporary easements running over lots on the adjacent street. But after selling all the houses on the paper street the developer disappeared and nobody wanted to pay for the actual building of the paper street. The people who lived on the paper street just used the theoretically temporary easements on a practically permanent basis.

Once a year the owners of the adjacent lots would erect a temporary fence across the easement to prove that they hadn't legally abandoned their claim over the land. On that day the people who lived on the paper street had to ask permission to cross their neighbors' land. When I was a kid this had been going on longer than anyone in the neighborhood could remember -- judging from the age of the houses maybe thirty years -- but every year those neighbors would put those fences up in the hope that some day the paper street would be built and the easements would cease.

Of course the legal technicalities with the Hawaii telescopes are probably different, but the political principle is the same. If you don't assert your claims periodically, people will argue that you've abandoned them. And I suppose that Hawaiian natives are allowed to have politics like everyone else. Maybe sometimes there are more telescope friendly people in charge, and other times more native-rights assertive people.

They can, but are they? I have only seen residential solar which reacted to grid overload/underload situations (i.e. situations which should never occur in an ideal world), not any which reacted to constant requirements for reactive power. Do you know of any which take part in the standard grid stabilization in normal use, outside of grid emergencies?

Will Windows Phone thrive by being a better iOS than iOS and a better Android than Android? It did not work for OS/2 20 years ago.

No, they are not. You may be thinking of this: http://www.snopes.com/politics...