There seems to be SUCH fervor over whether Barack Obama has latent "Socialist" leanings.

Capitalism, Communism, Socialism ALL seem to have a mixture of good and bad ideas and side effects.

We have adopted "Socialist" programs in our Capitalist democracy in respect to our police departments, fire departments, public school systems, and now thanks to runaway free-market greed on Wall Street we have "Socialized" several major banks.
The deregulated, greed driven, winner take all and fuck everybody else free market ideology is now costing American taxpayers too beleaguered to afford health insurance 3/4 trillion dollars.

So Obama wants to give some tax relief to Americans who "GROSS" between 'poverty level' and 'middle class' by leveling the tax burden with those who "NET" many MANY times more than they need.
What is so evil and horrifically socialist/communist in this otherwise fair, ability based equalization of individual tax burdens?        

Hell yes. Everything is equal. Thievery is good, especially if it is officially sanctioned.  
"Tax burden"?? Is it a burden to the 50% of the people who pay nothing and expect a check from their neighbors because they decide to sit on their ass all day and whine and wail until some sheep herder politician who despises them comes along and gets them to kiss his ass in exchange for his mugging the neighbor who works. I suppose that is a "burden" of morality, at least.

The problem is that the capitalists have state power. In the USA its capitalism or nothing.

You say that we have adopted socialiast programs into our society, citing public schools, pplice departments, fire departments, ect.

The fact that something is "public" does not mean it is an aspect of socialism.  

Socialism generally refers to state ownership of businesses, not all services. In every society in history there were public police deparments, armies, public officials. But those weren't examples of socialism.

Hopefully the banks will be temporary. We "bailed out" Chrysler, the Goverenment made money, and then no longer was involved in the company.  It was a temporary measure in an emergency.  

Let me give you one quick example of why Obama's tax relief will hurt everybody.  My best friend is a personal trainer. He owns a small gym.  A lot of his clients train with him twice a day at $75 per session.  For those of his clients in the income range of  $250,000, if their taxes increase 5,000 per year, they may see what "luxuries" they can cut down on.

My friend is one of the first things they will drop.  

There are tens of thousands of small businesses that will lose much of their business.  Coffee places, hair dressers, interior decorators, ballet teachers, waiters, pet sitters, trainers, and groomer, are just a few of the businesses that I have some knoweldge about that depend on "rich" peoples' "mad money."

Finally, you ask why there is such demonizing of other ideas.  For 8 years the terms "Nazi,"
"totalitarian," "dictator," "facist," and "tyranical" have been applied to the GOP.  Suddenly, the word "socialist" appears and everyone does a  "Gosh, why do we use such nasty words?"  Maybe if people had stopped with the hyperbole six years ago, we wouldn't be here today.

To the extent that Obama wants to spread wealth, the word socialist is more accurate that is the word "Nazi" when used with Bush.

fake socialism on some services that he thinks should be more regulated by the government. Mainly health care services. Obama is not a socialist by a long shot.