Republicans defending socialism

I understand (I think) most of the series of political calculations that got them there, but this is just too rich anyway. The only way the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Baucus approach to health care doesn't bust the budget dramatically is by including some $4-5 hundred billion in cutbacks in Medicare over the next 10 years (they won't make those cuts anyway, but that's a tale for another day). So the Republicans are now defending every penny spent on Medicare as if it were sacred. Medicare is as close as anything in our current system to a pure socialist approach to medicine. So that's what Republicans defend if they think it leads to blowing up plans for the next phase ogf government takeover. I sympathiz3, and it just might work. But the irony/hypocrisy deserves a mention.

Who's socialist now?

This news is fascinating. In Sweden, long touted as a soft-socialist model that the U.S. really should emulate, the auto company Saab is in trouble and looking to the government for some possible help. But the country's enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson has said, "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories. Meanwhile, the U.S. government, under a putatively Republican administration, could hardly wait to bail out Detroit automakers. So who's closer to being a socialist state?

To be sure after decades under Social Democrats, Sweden now has a right-leaning government that, if not determined to roll back socialism, at least resists further state intervention and ownership. And when I posted an item on this phenomenon on the Register's Orange Punch blog, a commenter pointed out that Saab is owned by GM, so it's not quite the patriotic icon it once was. Still, there are plenty of workers in Trollhatten, where the plant is located, eager to complain to reporters about how hard-hearted the Swedish government is.