E/1 must get out and vote for McCain- this is serious!!!!!!!

entropy

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 5:30 am

professor wrote:

will the obana supporters PLEASE tell me why you are supporting him? Its not because u believe in uni hc. Its not because you actually believe he will leave the middle east alone. so what is it ain a position to sebout him that you do like? please let me know I am very curious!! youre killing me withy curiosity!

OK, OK!!! I feel for you professor, because I'm also desperate for those voting unlike me to just give me one intelligent reason, any intelligent reason that will make sense.
Let me answer your question for myself:
First, I do believe in his healthcare plan. I can't stand the thought of even one American not getting surgery or treatment because they cant afford it. I can't stand the thought of an entire family's health coverage dissapearing because the breadwinner's employment fell through. I can't even wrap my mind aroundyou ppl not supporting healthcare for everyone.
Second, the only thing I really care about is Israel. I think he is the better bet for bringing stability to the middle east, and I mean it in the most immediate sense of pikuach nefesh for the Jewish nation. I think he is in a better position for negotiating smartly with Arab leaders and earning their trust and get a better deal from them than McCain ever could be, not least because he's not WASPy looking and has an Arab name. (To be embarrassingly honest, O's name is the main reasons I supportted McCain until recently)
Third, it's not that I like him, it's that McCain scares me. Bush destroyed the US, and McCain has no idea how to fix it. If the US keeps sinking, its policy on Israel will become irrelevent becuase it will be too weak to defend Israel, no matter how willing McCain will be to invade our enemies.
Fourth, I can't think of one single reason McCain will be better. I'm still waiting for someone intelligent to explain it to me.

Last edited by entropy on Thu, Oct 30 2008, 5:38 am; edited 3 times in total

daamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 5:34 am

entropy wrote:

Bush destroyed the US, and McCain has no idea how to fix it. If the US keeps sinking, its policy on Israel will become irrelevent becuase it will be too weak to defend Israel, no matter how willing McCain will bmcmce to invade our enemies.
Fourth, I can't think of one single reason McCain will be better. I'm still waiting for someone intelligent to explain it to me.

elf123

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 2:26 pm

Okay, BTMom, here goes: (until we make a separate Brady Bunch thread)
Fill in the blanks:
When Greg took his girlfriend, _____, to the drive-in movie, Bobby's pet ____ jumped out and jumped into the ____ they were eating.

btMOMtoFFBs

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 2:47 pm

Good one elf, I am partially stumped. A frog jumped into the popcorn, but as for the girl's name???.

BTW, I started a very Brady thread in the chit chat section this morning.

Can you give me multiple choice on the girl's name and I'll see if I can remember.

elf123

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:04 pm

Okay, Greg's girlfriend's name was:
a) Susan
b) Holly
c) Rachel
d) Jennifer

Also, I'm pretty sure the frog (correct) jumped into their pizza...but I have not established if I am correct yet, working on it...I have a strong visual of a frog sitting in a pile of gooey cheese...

btMOMtoFFBs

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:15 pm

taking a guess here.... Susan?

Oh yeah, the pizza.

Darn, you're good.

small bean

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:21 pm

entropy wrote:
Bush destroyed the US, and McCain has no idea how to fix it. If the US keeps sinking, its policy on Israel will become irrelevent becuase it will be too weak to defend Israel, no matter how willing McCain will bmcmce to invade our enemies.
Fourth, I can't think of one single reason McCain will be better. I'm still waiting for someone intelligent to explain it to me.

DEMOCRATS DESTROYED THE USA, it's all becasue of the credit crisis which was brought on by the democrats (we have a majority democratic congress) and democrats beleive in spread the wealth, this lead to crazzy leverage (why lehman went under giving out 30 to 1) and crazzy loans. Freddie Mac/ Fannie May, was started by democrats.

NO Offense but people who blame bush for the economy are really ignorant on what goes on....

chavamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:27 pm

There is plenty of blame to go around for the current housing mess/credit fiasco without trying to blame it all on the Dems (and please keep in mind that we have only had a Democratic congress for the past 2 years - the problems started long before that).

Quote:

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

You can read the entire article about "Who Caused the Economic Crisis" here

cassandra

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:33 pm

small bean wrote:

DEMOCRATS DESTROYED THE USA, it's all becasue of the credit crisis which was brought on by the democrats (we have a majority democratic congress) and democrats beleive in spread the wealth, this lead to crazzy leverage (why lehman went under giving out 30 to 1) and crazzy loans. Freddie Mac/ Fannie May, was started by democrats.

NO Offense but people who blame bush for the economy are really ignorant on what goes on....

Here is an interesting opinion piece to that affect (from the WSJ):

Quote:

At the October 7 Presidential debate, John McCain said that Barack Obama had encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make risky loans, and that Mr. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign cash from the government mortgage giants.

Mr. Obama replied that he "never promoted Fannie Mae" and that "two years ago I said that we've got a subprime lending crisis that has to be dealt with." And that's not all. "I wrote to Secretary Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and told them this is something we have to deal with, and nobody did anything about it," said the Illinois Senator.

There's more. Mr. Obama's March 2007 letter included a stirring call to "assess options" and boldly suggested that the two men "facilitate a serious conversation" about housing. He was even brave enough to suggest that "the relevant private sector entities and regulators" might be able to provide "targeted responses." Then in paragraph four, the Harvard-trained lawyer dropped his bombshell: a suggestion that various interest groups get together to "consider" best practices in mortgage lending.

Some may find it hard to believe that Mr. Obama had nothing to show for this herculean effort to shake up Washington. They may be shocked as well that such passionate language didn't move the Fed and Treasury to action. For our part, we note that nowhere in his letter did Mr. Obama suggest that the government should stop subsidizing loans to people who can't repay them.

This is the latest fad among Beltway liberals who spent years encouraging noneconomic mortgage loans. They now proudly announce that at critical moments they issued a press release, or wrote someone, suggesting that somebody do something. Since soured mortgage loans are a root cause of this panic, and since Democrats did so much to encourage mortgage lending, the most politically useful of these archived warnings are the ones blaming something other than housing.

For example, recent media reports have lauded the prescience of Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has long called for increased regulation of financial derivatives. Not that this says much about derivatives. Mr. Markey has also called for increased regulation of the Internet, cable TV, telephones, prescription drugs, nuclear plants, natural gas facilities, oil drilling, air cargo containers, chlorine, carbon dioxide, accounting, advertising and amusement parks, among other things.

But derivatives are the irresistible story now, because they offer the opportunity to shift the blame from bad housing policy, and they suggest that a lack of financial regulation was the problem. While lauding Mr. Markey, the media also cast Brooksley Born, Bill Clinton's Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as the ultimate heroine in this drama. Like Horatio at the bridge, she tried to regulate the derivatives market over the objections of such dummies as Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, SEC chief Arthur Levitt, and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

The left's hope is that derivatives are so poorly understood that people can be convinced that turmoil in the market for credit default swaps -- an effect of soured mortgage loans -- is actually a cause of this crisis. Credit default swaps (CDS) are insurance policies against companies or investment vehicles going bankrupt and being unable to pay their creditors. This insurance is cheap when things are going well, and very expensive when investors expect the relevant entities to fail. Turns out that the markets for CDS and other derivatives not tied to the housing crisis are functioning normally.

Meanwhile, in an amazing coincidence, it is the failure -- or the expected failure -- of entities with heavy exposure to toxic mortgages that is putting extreme financial strain on those who sold insurance. But the problem can't possibly be the toxic mortgages encouraged by Washington, according to the politicians. It must be the system of insuring against the collapse of those who bought the mortgages.

Did many sellers of credit default swaps make horrendous judgments in assessing the likelihood of defaults? Yes, and they were encouraged to make these poor judgments by government-approved credit-rating agencies stamping approval on mortgage-backed securities. If an investment or commercial bank was holding assets branded rock-solid by government's anointed judges of creditworthiness, who wouldn't feel comfortable insuring against their failure?

Much of the subprime disaster could have been avoided if only the credit raters had never agreed to slap the AAA tag on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Almost no one understood these instruments, which contained portions from other pools of mortgage-backed securities, but with even less transparency. Most investors around the world had never heard of a CDO before the housing boom. But they knew what AAA meant. They had been told for years by the government's chosen credit raters that this label meant sound, conservative investing. Highly unlikely to default.

If Barack Obama wants to write any more letters, he should urge his colleagues in Washington to focus on the causes of this crisis, not the effects. Unlike Senators, Presidents are expected to solve problems, not merely write about them.

Clarissa

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:38 pm

Not just any cake, but cake that's delicate but rich, at the same time. Not too heavy and dense, but rich-tasting.

Yeah, I love cake like that.

small bean

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:39 pm

chavamom - let me explain republicans dont believe in giving out credit like that - the credit crisis started a long time ago, nothing to do with the present congress and president. but if you read up on the credit crisis (I work in a hedgefund, I can get you reall sources) you will see it was clearly started by democrats. whoever blames it on bush is ignorant.

now I want clear reasons without quoting other ppl why you are voting for obama - and I asked you before if you were a democrat

chavamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:41 pm

I'm not registered with a party.

chavamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:42 pm

And I think you didn't look at what I posted above from factcheck.org Wink

chavamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:43 pm

You want me to start a thread, point by point outlining my reasons for voting for Obama? I think that's kind of personal, don't you? I think I'd rather eat CAKE WITH CLARISSA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clarissa

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:44 pm

Great. You bring the milk.

small bean

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:44 pm

chavamom im not either registered with a party, but the way I think is republican - do you always think in a democratic way or do you just like obama.

im just curious if im talking to a democrat by nature or someone who likes obama

cookielady

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:45 pm

Maybe Im slow, but what cake??

chavamom

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:46 pm

I'm not sure what someone who "always thinks democrat" means? How about you pass the cookies and tell us what "thinking republican" is?

btMOMtoFFBs

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:48 pm

Clarissa, can you please post that recipe? I've heard so much about it.

Also, does it use real or imitation vanilla?

cookielady

Thu, Oct 30 2008, 3:48 pm

btMOMtoFFBs wrote:

Clarissa, can you please post that recipe? I've heard so much about it.

Also, does it use real or imitation vanilla?

Bite your tongue, It had better be PURE.