Election

[Klaus]

Just had to post this LOL

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VnQmKhpP87s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Trany]

It would be funny if it wasnt true.

http://moonbattery.com/philadelphia-polling-place.jpg

[Grafton]

And they make atheists vote in church.

edit: My point is just that sometimes you have to use the venue that's available. I'd imagine they knew who the guy on the wall was before they got there.

[Chadwick]

And they make atheists vote in church.

edit: My point is just that sometimes you have to use the venue that's available. I'd imagine they knew who the guy on the wall was before they got there.

Not exactly the same thing....in case you weren't aware campaigning in poling places is illegal.

[Grafton]

No, not exactly the same, just a comment on venue availability. But I'd guess that's a mural from his 2008 win. If I'm wrong, let me eat my words.

Of course, with that said, wouldn't have been that hard to put a big American flag overtop the mural, right? :) Your point is well taken that campaigning inside is and should be illegal.

[Trany]

We have once again proven that the vast majority of the citizens regularly shit the bed. It’s not even a left or right thing. If you are given a job for four years with these expected tasks and you fail to meet any of them, and actually go 180 degrees you should not have the job. I am ashamed of the religious right guys “however you use the word rape it never is going to come out ok”. I am equality embarrassed by things that failed like voter ID in the fine state of MN, you need an ID to cash your government check, or buy name brand cigarettes with your EBT card, and you need one to vote. Yet the troglodytes who vote in Minnesota prove once again that we shit the bed with the rest of them.

The only saving grace is that there will be gridlock and hopefully I want to see who flinches first or what we do when we go over the edge? This will be a two year double epic failure, and should shift the makeup once again. Maybe we can see a real rise of a true third party, one that takes from both the left and the right. Maybe a true libertarian party, not some nut bag Ron Paul shit, but a legitimate group. Get the fiscally conservative people from both sides, and you remove the bleeding heart liberals and the zealots from the right. The party would be compromised of centralists who are fiscally concerned and socially don’t give a damn what you do.

It’s too good to be true, we’ll need to suffer through 12-20 years of one part in control before it would work. There are no allies to a rogue group, and there is little money. The fiscal cliff is looming, we get some built in austerity, but if we trigger those events will that light the fuse on the hyperinflation time bomb?

[Grafton]

Very well put together post. I heard last night that you guys spent 2 years and 3 Billion dollars on this election, only to end up in the exact same place you were. That kinda hurts.

I have NO idea why voter ID is an issue. That's ridiculous to me. Here you need a photo ID and I'd be worried if you didn't. How do these people buy booze or get on an airplane? I'm sorry, but if you're capable of leaving the house to vote, you can go down to the DMV and get an ID card. I don't understand the debate on the other side at all.

I hope you guys do figure out a way to get a fiscally conservative 3rd party going, and you're right, not with a nutjob like Ron Paul running it. I don't really have much of a vested interest in your politics down there, but it's certainly interesting, and a strong US economy is good for Canada to be sure. Cut out the hippies and the bible thumpers and you'll be good to go. :)

[Trany]

So Monkey got gas on election day for 3.08 a gallon, I got gas today for 3.33 a gallon.... Hmpf the DOW has droped ~450 in two days. its not hope and change, its now Forward, forward to what the Weimar Republic ? lets see how that ends up?

[Klaus]

I guess the only thing that really bums me out is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the marriage penalty coming back. It will be another "first" ticket for the Democrats in 4 year with Hillary I am sure... yawn. I do want the Republicans to get their shit together over the next 4-8 years because fiscally I agree with their policies it's just every election is about social issues that don't matter when the economy is in the shitter.

[Chadwick]

The realty is we either fall of the cliff or kick the can along the edge to a higher part of the cliff. Eventually we will fall. It's just a matter of time at this point.

I think we could have turned things around somewhere in 2008-2010 but i think we are too far gone in the debt and entitlement areas now.

Canada or Australia are looking really good right about now.

[Trany]

I vote for the cliff sure it will suck, but the taxes aren’t getting raised, the “temporary” cuts are being repealed, the will get it from you either way. The Right also get dinged in defense spending, but if you figure we are winding down some overseas troops and reducing our forces, it’s an easy concession. The left though get a drop kick to the seeds, you get automatic austerity, and no one likes to give up their handouts.

Now the out of control spending and bloating of the government is only going to get worse, we do have the immeasurable price tag of Obamacare. You already have a shortage of nurses and doctors and even beds. So you have a static supply. And this supply is shrinking fast, you have the “boomers” getting old and dropping out of the workforce, and medical professional can’t keep up with the attrition. But through well though policy that makes everyone tingle in the pants, you have decided to tax the system with another 15,000,000 patients, or increase the demand. Now anyone with econ 101 can tell you that limited supply with an increase of demand will drive the price up.

Add to this that there is a shortage, and that hospitals and clinics will be paying a premium or higher wages to retain or recruit talent. The cost of the education and licensure will rise as well. The whole thing is then going to be administered by state agencies working as an insurance marketplace? And these state body’s will be regulated by oh yea a new government agency.
So the government is going to force everyone to get insurance, there is incentive for employer’s to drop coverage, the penalty is low for now. The government wants you to get on their plan, it will make socialized health care easier to force onto the populous. They want to shred the private insurers as well, those profits could really fill someone’s entitlement coffers. But the guise of cost savings is 100% a lie, it will cost more, and these 15Million aren’t physical specimens of healthy living. You don’t eat the most balanced and nutritious meals with an EBT card.

[Ender]

Neither party has been fiscally responsible since the Clinton administration, and I don't think either party would be capable of being fiscally responsible in the near future so it doesn't really matter which of them got elected. Lets look at the past 12 years in a nutshell:

Bush: "Lets invade Iraq for absolutely no fucking reason, spend the next 10 years paying to help them rebuild while getting shit on by insurgents, and drastically cut taxes at the same time while not reducing government spending". What a great idea.

Obama: "Lets throw trillions of dollars at credit card companies and banks that are corrupt as fuck, which is why they were on the verge of collapse in the first place, in an effort to save them." Brilliant.

Nothing but poor decisions have been made on both sides for the past 12 years, and the politicians that have been put into office by these parties have continually proven to be incompetent. Yet, both parties continue to receive heavy campaign contributions from the private sector. So, maybe you shouldn't be asking "why vote for this asshole again if he has not done his job for the past 4 years?" Instead, maybe you should be asking "why do these people continue to receive a shitload of money to support them getting elected when they have done nothing to improve the country for the past 12 years?"

This country will continue on the same path until politicians are no longer having their pockets continually stuffed or making decisions solely based on who is stuffing them the most. The party system needs to be dissolved and this country needs to go back to voting for which candidate themselves is the best for the job.

[Trany]

Neither party has been fiscally responsible since the Clinton administration, and I don't think either party would be capable of being fiscally responsible in the near future so it doesn't really matter which of them got elected. Lets look at the past 12 years in a nutshell:

Bush: "Lets invade Iraq for absolutely no fucking reason, spend the next 10 years paying to help them rebuild while getting shit on by insurgents, and drastically cut taxes at the same time while not reducing government spending". What a great idea.


Why did we invade Iraq? WMD's and an asshat in power. You can say the Bush administration lied about WMD's but we knew they had them because in the 80's we played both sides of the Iran Iraq war. We love to play power broker in the middle east, it’s easy to get oil and manipulate the Arabs into changing production to adjust the supply and price of oil. It has always been in America's interest to keep the region a mess.

Regan and WMD's. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm)
More WMD info. (http://www.gulfwarvets.com/arison/banking.htm)
80's Iraq support. (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf)

The housing market bubble that burst lays mostly on democrat policy and lack and deregulation. The result of Clinton era ideology to allow people to but homes without proper valuation, verification of income, etc. It was a case of you can burrow greater than the ~%40 of your income from monthly payment. The mortgage lenders and banks took advantage of the situation; they didn’t break the rules or laws. The offered shitty products, interest only loans, balloons, ARM’s, they played by the rules of capitalism.

The Idea of corporate greed is silly, people complain about paying higher interest rates, and the cost of debt. But they don’t complain when their retirement and investments yield high interest rates.

www.factcheck.org/2008/10/who-caused-the-economic-crisis
www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s190
http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/12/1993-12-08-briefing-by-bentsen-and-rubin.text.html
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1995-05-04/pdf/95-10503.pdf#page=1
http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/7-7-09-housing-crisis-report.pdf

It boils down to two things


The government has been on the shady, and won’t admit it. A vast majority of the county is ignorant to this, we have always played favorites where we shouldn’t sometimes it works in our favor but other times it fails.
The second is on the ignorance of the borrowers. The people signing the mortgage papers didn’t read or understand what they were buying, I am certain a vast majority of the lenders asked if they had question, and would have answered them if asked. But the lack of scrutiny and guidelines is the result of Clinton era policy, and slow action to clamp down or solve the problems. Companies and banks ties to mortgage backed securities and products got burnt by buying a portfolio with a large portion of subprime mortgages, and the burrowers default on them.

[Klaus]

Both sides are fucked up. And lets not forget that everyone was behind the wars after 9/11.... Not just Bush. It's easy to look back and say how bad of an idea it is now but at the time all Americans wanted blood.

[Ender]

Why did we invade Iraq? WMD's and an asshat in power. You can say the Bush administration lied about WMD's but we knew they had them because in the 80's we played both sides of the Iran Iraq war.

No, they didn't have WMDs. None. 0. I find it incredible that so many people, yourself included apparently, still do not know the truth and continue to believe what was a complete fabrication. You obviously haven't researched about what really went on leading up to that war. Research "Curveball" and watch these 60 minutes episodes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3450752n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7359532n

What the bush administration did was fucking criminal, and him and every appointed member of his cabinet should be rotting in jail right now. He used an uncredible source of intell as an excuse to finish his dad's job. They could have easily cross checked this source, and in fact did find out faults in the information he provided prior to invading. But, they ignored them and did so anyway.

And if you think the middle east as a whole is better off without Saddam in power, you are sorely mistaken. True, he was a vicious dictator and probably deserved his fate, but he was also a balance of power in opposition of Shiite Iran. Now, Shiite Muslims loyal to Iran have taken over power of Iraq, which provides them direct access through both Iraq and Syria to provide weapons, support, etc. Iran is making a power grab now as a direct result of this shift in power balance in the region, and they are the ones we really need to worry about due to their disdain towards both the US and Israel. There will be long lasting and serious negative effects as a result of our direct involvement.

[Ender]

The housing market bubble that burst lays mostly on democrat policy and lack and deregulation. The result of Clinton era ideology to allow people to but homes without proper valuation, verification of income, etc. It was a case of you can burrow greater than the ~%40 of your income from monthly payment. The mortgage lenders and banks took advantage of the situation; they didn’t break the rules or laws. The offered shitty products, interest only loans, balloons, ARM’s, they played by the rules of capitalism.

Actually, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was written by three Republican senators, so Clinton and Democrats aren't the only ones to blame, though they are also to blame since they endorsed it and added in the requirement that a bank had to have a high CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) score in order to qualify for merging. This led to banks wanting to give out a bunch of loans to low income borrowers that they knew couldn't pay them back, but those banks were able to manage those losses since they earned more profits from becoming involved in investments and insurance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

"Many believe that the Act directly helped cause the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. President Barack Obama has stated that GLB led to deregulation that, among other things, allowed for the creation of giant financial supermarkets that could own investment banks, commercial banks and insurance firms, something banned since the Great Depression. Its passage, critics also say, cleared the way for companies that were too big and intertwined to fail.[22] Economists Robert Ekelund and Mark Thornton have also criticized the Act as contributing to the crisis. They state that "in a world regulated by a gold standard, 100% reserve banking, and no FDIC deposit insurance" the Financial Services Modernization Act would have made "perfect sense" as a legitimate act of deregulation, but under the present fiat monetary system it "amounts to corporate welfare for financial institutions and a moral hazard that will make taxpayers pay dearly."[23]
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has also argued that the Act helped to create the crisis.[24] In an article in The Nation, Mark Sumner asserted that the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was responsible for the creation of entities that took on more risk due to their being considered “too big to fail."[25] Other critics also assert that proponents and defenders of the Act espouse a form of "eliteconomics" that has, with the passage of the Act, directly precipitated the current economic recession while at the same time shifting the burden of belt-tightening measures onto the lower- and middle-income classes.[26]"

Blame is on both sides for our current economic problems. Both parties have proved incompetent.

[Trany]

How did saddam gas the kurds? There were 5K+ killed. He had them at one point, they didn't just disappear. Gulf war syndrome, I am sure there are a few people who would support the truth that he had chemical weapons.

Read a link or two.

1. Iraq had a highly-developed chemical warfare program with: numerous large production facilities; binary (precursor chemical/solvent) capabilities, stockpiled agents and weapons; multiple and varied delivery systems; and, a documented history of chemical warfare agent use.

2. Iraq had an offensive biological weapons program with: multiple research/production facilities; evidence of weaponization experimentation; and, a history of reported but unconfirmed use.

3. The United States provided the Government of Iraq with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile- system programs, including chemical warfare agent precursors; chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans); chemical warhead filling equipment; biological warfare related materials; missile fabrication equipment; and, missile-system guidance equipment.


It is the Jews, Christians, Muslims, the Muslims who aren’t Muslims enough, Hindus all fighting over dirt. It has been a mess since the beginning of time, and will continue to be. We just like to keep it rocky, there is no solution there, minus empowering the women and educating them without the influence of religion. We played puppet regime in Iran with the shah, the 70’s ended that, and ushered in the Iran contra mess. We backed the afghans and Osama Bin Laden during the 80’s and the soviet invasion, we backed Iraq during the Iraq Iran war. There are only two “allies” In the Middle East, Israel which we keep muzzled, but they will do the dirty work. The Mossad is our friendly honey badger. Then we have the Saudi’s they talk out of both sides of their mouths but we send them enough money that they will play nice, it’s the closest thing we got there to a friend, minus Israel. Virtually every other country there hates us on a sliding scale, it is dependent who they hate more? The Muslims there if they are or aren’t Muslim enough, the Jews, the Hindus.

[Ender]

1. Iraq had a highly-developed chemical warfare program with: numerous large production facilities; binary (precursor chemical/solvent) capabilities, stockpiled agents and weapons; multiple and varied delivery systems; and, a documented history of chemical warfare agent use.

2. Iraq had an offensive biological weapons program with: multiple research/production facilities; evidence of weaponization experimentation; and, a history of reported but unconfirmed use.

HAD being the key word. They no longer had them when we invaded, because we bombed the shit out of them in Desert Storm and they did not have the resources to rebuild such programs after that. Show me the link that provides proof that they had such programs in place at the time we invaded, and that we found such weapons. Wouldn't Bush have shown that to the world to say "here, see I was right" instead of changing his excuse to "regime change"?

They had no such WMDs, smoking gun, or anything even close. It was a fabrication by an Iraqi defector, and our government bought it hook, line, and sinker. The only people who would still agree with you are those that are still ignorant to the facts and believe anything the government tells them without question. Our country has paid dearly for this mistake in both expense and lives.

[Trany]

"The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton", granted it’s from a Wikipedia article. But the act was signed into law in 1999 passing the Senate 90-8 (52-1 R, 38-7 D) House 362-57 (207-5 R, 155-51 D). So to assign it to one party is ridiculous, it was to change depression area policy. Why blame the law, which passed with a ~85% in both chambers. I am fairly familiar with GLBA, SOX, Dodd-Frank, and PCI compliance. Working for one of the big evil banks, I dealt with these on a daily basis until I moved out of the controllers group.

Where is personal responsibility? The banks and lenders followed the rules. Society as a whole is failing at accepting their own f ups. You sign the note, just like a car loan, a credit application, and student loans. If you don’t understand, the terms rates, other mechanics then you have no one to blame but yourself. The truth in lending act should cover this, as it one of the things you sign. The fact is groups of people purchased homes they couldn’t afford, or got into a bad product. Heck we bought our house on a NINA(no income no assets), we refinanced after a year. It got us in the house and I knew exactly what we signed, it was an arm, which in retrospect would have been better as we would have a rate around 4% today.

[Trany]

On June 21, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released key points from a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center on the recovery of a small number of degraded chemical munitions in Iraq. The report stated that "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent." However, all are thought to be pre-Gulf War munitions
Still WMD's (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dni/dni_ltr_wmd_21jun06.pdf)

[Ender]

On June 21, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released key points from a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center on the recovery of a small number of degraded chemical munitions in Iraq. The report stated that "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent." However, all are thought to be pre-Gulf War munitions
Still WMD's (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dni/dni_ltr_wmd_21jun06.pdf)

Exactly, degraded. Which means they were not usable as weapons grade at the time they were found post-invasion. Sarin degrades fairly quickly so it has a limited shelf life (after several weeks or a few months), and by the time we found any shells containing that chemical from pre-gulf war they would have been useless. Mustard gas, even prior to degradation, is not significantly lethal, but mainly causes painful burns. And considering that these were found in artillery shells, even if they were not degraded, they are useless to anyone wanting to use them as a terrorist weapon.

The point is there was no active program in place in Iraq for the production or potential use of WMDs at the time we invaded them for that reason. So at the time, they were not a "smoking gun" to anyone even in the region, much less to our country.

Our government was told a lie, they believed it without investigating whether it was true, and they invaded a country based on it.