And this is why Nader will be receiving my vote on Nov. 4th and every challenger to an incumbent will also be getting my vote. Until we kick out the old career politicians nothing will ever change.
[quote]Out of curiosity, what would "minimum requirements" be?[/quote] The minimum requirements to serve in office are defined in the constitution. [quote]Heh, a card carrying Klansman from the whitest state in the nation. Sounds like a good deal to me, lol. [/quote] In fairness he hasn't been a member of the KKK for quite a long time and has since stated that he regrets ever being a part of the Klan.
[quote]Agreed on both counts. Politically speaking, good ideas have no retail value, and while I don't mind if some rich dude makes it to the WH on his good ideas, I don't think that lots of money causes good ideas. We're missing a whole crop of people with good ideas simply because they aren't rich enough to compete. That's the problem in a nutshell.[/quote] And this is why there needs to be serious campaign finance reform. We need to have some sort of legislation put in place
[quote]There are some constitutional issues to be considered, for example, who is in power during the time the NOTA vote wins by a landslide and new candidates must be produced for another election? Do we just maintain the status quo? That would violate term-limits.[/quote] As far as the presidential race goes in the event of no president being elected by the inaguration date of 1/20/09 the power would fall onto the president pro-tem in the Senate. Currently that person is Rober
Unfortunately negatives work so we are unlikely to see them go away. Maybe "work" is the wrong word but rather I should go with a phrase like "they reach their intended goal". Because the goal of a negative ad isn't to point out the bad points of your opponent but rather to turn off the middle from voting. You see the two major parties don't want those of us in the middle to vote on Nov. 4th, they want us to stay home and they want to "energize their base" meaning the extrem
[quote]I see some light at the end of the tunel because "We the people" are telling our representitives how we feel and no one whats to piss off the people during an election year, when this election cycle is over is when they have the best chance of passing a bad bill.[/quote] The problem is that our representatives are ignoreing the people on this issue. The people don't want this bailout and yet it passed the Senate with flying colors and is likely to pass the House when it i
There are ways to change the system but it is a very long term solution which turns off a lot of people in our immediate gratification culture that we are in. 1) Vote against every incumbent running for office. If we can kick out a fair number of the incumbents a message will be sent to all elected officials reminding them of who they work for, not big business, not special interests, not lobbyists but we the people. 2) Vote for as many third party candidates as you can
I agree we need a separation of business and state. All we need is a few regulatory agencies out there that are independent of partisan bs and that's it. We need a major market correction and you are right it will be painful, people will lose their jobs, businesses will collapse, etc. But from the ashes a better marketplace will rise and in a relatively short time things will be better. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen. A bailout will get passed, it may n
[quote]That is totally seperate from the bailout issue. The problem is that these mbs's are sliced and diced pieces of revenue streams from various mortgages so they are seperate from the mortgages themselves. So even if you fix peoples mortgages you still have a bunch of banks and companies that are sitting on illiquid mbs's.[/quote] What happens to MBS's when the mortgages they are based on are paid off? They increase in value to what they were originally supposed to be right?
[quote]It is broken. Nobody knows which companies are exposed to mbs's. Nobody knows which companies are cooking their books. Nobody knows whether companies are properly valuing their assets so investors don't know if they are leveraged properly.[/quote] That's not a broken market, that's broken companies. And how exactly is a bailout of any size going to fix the problems you identify here? Whether they are bailed out or not noone will know if they are cooking the books or
[quote]The Federal Reserve is contracting the money supply.[/quote] Really? So by contracting the money supply you mean tossing billions of dollars into the system? That isn't contracting anything. Now I can almost guarantee that the Fed will start contracting the money supply in the near future, but they certainly aren't doing that right now. [quote]Doing nothing will make things worse very quickly.[/quote] That's kinda the point. Do nothing no
[quote]No new business will be created until the banks will allow new lending, but that won't happen anytime soon, since the bankruptcy of banks creates a domino effect since they all have interests in each other. When bank X hits the dirt, all of the assets people put in it are scrap. So if Bank Y put a few million in assets in Bank X, Bank Y might also bankrupt. But then, Bank Z who had put assets in both Bank X and Y, who could have survive with only Bank X's bankruptcy, now is in deep tro
[quote]So 1 trillion was lost in the markets today....And that's mostly from Main St. because the people who understand this have already isolated themselves from a market downturn. And everyday this keeps going on more and more people will lose their jobs because the credit market is frozen so overnight lending is not happening and businesses that rely on this will close their doors.[/quote] The day to day fluctuations in the stock market aren't something to get all worked up over.&n
[quote who="CharlesCS" reply="2" id="1892446"] It's kinda ironic considering some spent a lot of time claiming the Bush administration never listened to the Majority and yet here we are with not only the Bush Administration but the House and the Senate ignoring the Majority yet again. I say we whther the storm. It may actually not only fix the economy in the long run but may also bring people together by having the need to depend on each other for support and more during the hard years t
My prediction if a bailout isn't passed is that some more banks will possibly fail. We will have a lot of consolodation in the market and emerge with a few big banks that are able to weather the storm (the will end up splitting back up into smaller banks, owned by a parent bank, that are more managable). Congress will enact some more regulations, probably too many this time but eventually a happy medium between under and over regulation will be reached. The credit marke
[quote]We can't ignore that most of these people knew they were getting themselves into this but chose to ignore it just to get that big house they wanted so bad (I mean, how can you not know you can't afford that house you are getting?). Or those who were doing the whole "flip this house" thing that are now screwed as well. I find it ironic to think that one works hard to earn a decent living or an above decent living only to give up some (a lot) of that hard earned money to pay for the poor
[quote]But when I say "almost everyone", I am talking about those who will vote on this. This decision is not an issue that us Americans will have a say in. This will be decided by politicians, regardless how much outcry there is because after all, we appointed them up there to do this for us, otherwise what would be the point of having Senators and Congress men if we could od the job ourselves?[/quote] Yes almost all Senators and Representatives believe something needs to be done bec
[quote]To all the people saying McCain is showing he can do his current job because of this; this isn't his current job.[/quote] He may not be on any of the commitees involved but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have influence over the Republican members of those commitees, some of them may welcome his thoughts and opinions. Not to mention the fact that as a Presidential candidate he could possibly end up inheriting whatever plan is worked out so he should at least understand
[quote]So you are saying the We are all Alcoholics? [/quote] Nope I'm saying the banks were the alcoholics. That saw that easy money that the Fed had to lend out and the gobbled it up and lent to anyone who walked in their doors. Some loan officers purposely falsified loan applications so that the applicant would be approved to get a loan they couldn't possibly afford. Yes the person getting that loan certainly should have known something was up, red flags should hav
At the moment he, and Obama as well, is a Senator first and a Presidential candidate second. He was elected to be one of the Senators for Arizona and he owes it to the people of Arizona to do whatever he can to solve this financial crisis. Yes canceling a debate at the last minute is going to be costly but this is a financial crisis the likes of which few have ever witnessed before and it needs to be dealt with. As a little caveat here I am of the opinion that no active si
[quote]The big deal is the pressure that is put on the so called "good kids" who are abstaining. Have you ever heard of the "bad company corrupts good character" principle?[/quote] Welcome to peer pressure. It's something that every kid has to deal with no matter what sex-ed class (or lack thereof) that they have. Removing sex-ed from school isn't going to stop that pressure from being there. A properly designed sex-ed class should give kids tools that they can use t
[quote]Let's keep in mind that this is something almost everyone believes is necessary while not exactly wanting to. [/quote] Um, not true. Take a look at the public outcry, most people out there do NOT think this is necessary. [quote]Let's face the reality that everyone has their hands dirty on this one, we can't really say with out a doubt either Republicans or Democrats are fully responsible for this. [/quote] Who said this was a political issue to start with?
[quote]But as far as THE FED being blameless of blameful, you have to ask yourself a question. Is it the bartender's fault that he served a drink to the alcoholic? If the answer is yes, then sure, you can blame the Feds. If not (and I do not blame the bartender), then the answer is no. The Feds made a mistake in making money too cheap. But they did not force the lenders or borrowers to take that drink.[/quote] But if the bartender knows that the person is an alcoholic and continues to
[quote]But as far as THE FED being blameless of blameful, you have to ask yourself a question. Is it the bartender's fault that he served a drink to the alcoholic? If the answer is yes, then sure, you can blame the Feds. If not (and I do not blame the bartender), then the answer is no. The Feds made a mistake in making money too cheap. But they did not force the lenders or borrowers to take that drink.[/quote] sorry for the double post, ignore this one.
[quote]Human sexuality other than some basic health, good hygiene, and biology stuff is all kids need to know from their schools.[/quote] I agree that parents should be the ones doing the sex-ed teaching, unfortunately far too many parents are either unwilling or uncomfortable doing so which leave the school as the best place for sex-ed (which should include everything I have mentioned before). As long as parents always have the option to opt out of the school provided sex-ed an