Sarah Palin, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate

[archibaldcrane]

Anyone see the forum with the last 6 secretaries of state the other night? Where they were all like "global warming is caused by man" and "We should open diplomatic relations with Iran" and stuff? It was pretty great.

Also, Colin Powell rules.

[kareface]

Not related to palin, but overall some good points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzc0re_3hQw

[Tyche]

I refuse to accept the argument of "omg they should've known better!!!!!!!!" because expecting everyone to be so knowledgeable about a complex series of contracts they have to sign for what is an extremely common occurance in America (buying a home) is kinda ridiculous, especially when they have some very eager salesmen who actually do know a bit better than they do telling them it's a good idea.

Do you know how much money is involved in getting a home in the first place? I bring this up because anyone so stupid enough not to pay a small amount to an attorney to help decipher a contract is a complete moron. If you spend several thousands of dollars in downpayments (or in P.M.I. if you have no down payment), as well as hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars in inspections and appraisals, yet don't spend a small amount of money on an attorney to see how your biggest investment is panning out over the next 15-30 years, then yeah, you should have known better. When you buy a house and have the contract drawn up, the first place your ass should be visiting is an attorney. So no, it's not rediculous at all to expect that, it's downright idiotic and possibly financial suicide. Now not everyone is going to do that, I understand, but it goes back to your point of "they should have known better". Yes, they should spend a little more time than 15 seconds of signing your name to 50 papers that will dictate your financial obligations for the majority of your adult life.

Edit: I agree that too many people that are huge credit risks (myself is included in this, I took out a mortgage at 22 with decent credit...not great credit) were given loans they shouldn't of have gotten. People were suckered in and loss of jobs has killed it. I don't fault the people entirelly, but I just wanted to get the point about housing contracts across.

[Rhinox]

Do you know how much money is involved in getting a home in the first place? I bring this up because anyone so stupid enough not to pay a small amount to an attorney to help decipher a contract is a complete moron. If you spend several thousands of dollars in downpayments (or in P.M.I. if you have no down payment), as well as hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars in inspections and appraisals, yet don't spend a small amount of money on an attorney to see how your biggest investment is panning out over the next 15-30 years, then yeah, you should have known better. When you buy a house and have the contract drawn up, the first place your ass should be visiting is an attorney. So no, it's not rediculous at all to expect that, it's downright idiotic and possibly financial suicide. Now not everyone is going to do that, I understand, but it goes back to your point of "they should have known better". Yes, they should spend a little more time than 15 seconds of signing your name to 50 papers that will dictate your financial obligations for the majority of your adult life.

Edit: I agree that too many people that are huge credit risks (myself is included in this, I took out a mortgage at 22 with decent credit...not great credit) were given loans they shouldn't of have gotten. People were suckered in and loss of jobs has killed it. I don't fault the people entirelly, but I just wanted to get the point about housing contracts across.

Not gonna disagree with you entirely because When we purchased our house we did go through the proper channels. That said, my lawyer on the deal did tell me of countless of times where people with English as a second language coming to him after the deal was done but there was nothing he could do because the paperwork had already been sign. You shouldn't take for granted that everyone that buys a house is as educated as you or do as much research as you probably did. He told me about Scummy Real estate agents who would prey on their own people just to sell a house. They would leave everything to the real estate agent since he/she would tell them that he would take care of everything just sign on the dotted line. So you see its a much broader spectrum of things then what you want to paint it with. There are many factors and calling someone a moron for not doing something that you take as a given without knowing the outlining details is Moronic in of within itself.

[geno]

Not related to palin, but overall some good points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzc0re_3hQw

I liked this quote from that video

"I suppose the McCain campaign's hope is that when there's a big crisis, people will go for age and experience," said Will. "The question is, who in this crisis looked more presidential, calm and un-flustered? It wasn't John McCain who, as usual, substituting vehemence for coherence, said 'let's fire somebody.' And picked one of the most experienced and conservative people in the administration, Chris Cox, and for no apparent reason... It was un-presidential behavior by a presidential candidate."

It was something I noticed this week as well. I've felt John McCain actually fared pretty well at the two forums with Obama (notably the second one, which wasn't on the most friendly of territory), but his response to financial situation last week was as telling about his judgment as his choice of Palin was.

[Beckwin]

yes tyche, I'm personally aware that homes are a lot of money and contracts have lots of fine print to be taken seriously. but the fact is that the majority of people do rely on their real estate agents and lenders for explanations and lawyers aren't part of the equation, especially for lower/middle class home buyers. there will always be people who make bad decisions when getting mortgages, but it's always been a smaller amount when we had more responsible regulation in place, thus I don't buy the "omg they should've known better!!!!!!!!!!" line because it's my belief that business ought to behave ethically given the protections they are afforded (again, we aren't bailing out the homeowners, we're bailing out the lenders ran by people lacking personal liability for fucking up).

[Sera]

Palin Warns Against 'Second Holocaust' by Ahmadinejad


http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalra...warns-aga.html



Send in the clowns.

oh wow, and that rally was thrown by american Jewish groups. nice.

Organized by American Jewish groups, the "Rally to Stop Iran Now" sent out a media advisory billing the joint appearance in their headline...

[Zalius]

Oh Hey there. Nice to meet your acquaintance. First off the Wikipedia joke I made is a given Jon stewart bit whats also given is the fact that about the majority of the people that frequent this topic watch it daily it should've came across that way. guess I should've factored in trolls like you and added a works cited footnote to the joke.


Overall pretty fail trolling attempt


Edit: Especially for a 1900 post.
Edit2: If you're talking about the "Can't fix stupid" joke. I'm sure Ron white wouldn't mind it considering he makes T-shirts with the phrase. Point still stands. It's not an Obscure fucking joke that I thought people wouldn't recognize.

gettin owned by cpt poly sci someone halp

[Correction]

Take a picture of your ass first.

[Zalius]

Take a picture of your ass first.

ok now what

[Olo401]

If you guys didn't get a chace to watch this week's episode of Real Time, I highly recommend it. I want to put it into words, but it was just too good.

And I don't usually find myself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan. He's really taken a hard turn tho - something in the Bush Administration really pissed him off.

[Tyche]

Not gonna disagree with you entirely because When we purchased our house we did go through the proper channels. That said, my lawyer on the deal did tell me of countless of times where people with English as a second language coming to him after the deal was done but there was nothing he could do because the paperwork had already been sign. You shouldn't take for granted that everyone that buys a house is as educated as you or do as much research as you probably did. He told me about Scummy Real estate agents who would prey on their own people just to sell a house. They would leave everything to the real estate agent since he/she would tell them that he would take care of everything just sign on the dotted line. So you see its a much broader spectrum of things then what you want to paint it with. There are many factors and calling someone a moron for not doing something that you take as a given without knowing the outlining details is Moronic in of within itself.

I think this is pretty simply, and you're just using weird quirky examples to justify a point. First, you're laying the blame in the wrong place. The "salesman" (real estate agent) doesn't draw up the loan contracts. The real estate agent is almost like a logistics manager in this instance. They draw up the initial offer and may assist you in finding a broker, and set up the meeting place. They are there to make everything really easy on you. Where the blame lies is in the broker/brokerage that is lending at a high risk. They draw up the mortgage contracts. Quite frankly, I don't care if you speak ancient cantonese when purchasing a house. Intelligence traverses linguistics across the board. It's your life at stake for the next several years. Do the damn research. Why would someone sign a contract and then take it to an attorney. That's just stupid, no wonder they are getting taken advantage of. The mortgage company isn't forcing your hand in signing this and a person should know that signing contracts isn't a formality. It just seems your argument here is "well, not everyone is educated, there's a lot of morons, so it's not their fault they are stupid". Sorry, I'm not buying that.

yes tyche, I'm personally aware that homes are a lot of money and contracts have lots of fine print to be taken seriously. but the fact is that the majority of people do rely on their real estate agents and lenders for explanations and lawyers aren't part of the equation, especially for lower/middle class home buyers. there will always be people who make bad decisions when getting mortgages, but it's always been a smaller amount when we had more responsible regulation in place, thus I don't buy the "omg they should've known better!!!!!!!!!!" line because it's my belief that business ought to behave ethically given the protections they are afforded (again, we aren't bailing out the homeowners, we're bailing out the lenders ran by people lacking personal liability for fucking up).

Oh no, I agree with you here. I just don't think it's as simple as contractual play that's the problem. It's more of a problem that lenders were throwing around high risk loans more than they ever had in the past. But yeah, it wasn't regulated well at all.

[Rhinox]

Look I'm not gonna argue over how smart Home buyers are but I will say this. There are laws against predatory lenders and against con artists that take advantage of the elderly so there is precedent to what I'm saying. Unfortunately not everyone has as Cynical a view of the world as you or I do. To clear up something the attorney did say they came after the papers were signed but what I forgot to mention is they only came to him after they found out they been screwed.

in other news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/bu...in&oref=slogin

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Disgusting. American tax payers bailing out foreign companies, make their own damn taxpayers bail them out.

[Dimmauk]

http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/...ffiliate.4.jpg

http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/...ffiliate.4.jpg


'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotype
By JOAN LOWY - Associated Press Writer

A box of Obama Waffles is seen in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008. A vendor at a conservative political forum was selling boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap. The product was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix and sold it for $10 a box at the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.


Ya'll talk about this? I saw this on the news the other day.

[Elvis]

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Full draft of the legislation here:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...-proposal.html

[eunhye]

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=1

Just some digging. Bush (or whoever is under him) saw this in 2003.

`SEC. 1379E. REPORTING OF FRAUDULENT LOANS.

`The Director shall, by regulation, require the regulated entities to timely report to the Director when the regulated entity discovers it has purchased or sold a fraudulent loan.'.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...?bill=s109-190

Tried to get this with support of McCain.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aSKSoiNbnQY0

Reiterated by some guy in Bloomberg.


Now I am not really a republican or so you may think I am, but I am more independent. I think Bush and his cronies have done worse. I feel earmarks, lobbyists etc should be abolished. Take those idiots away. They only serve the members of their respective board. Just despicable.

[aurik]

$125,000 in lifetime donations....you realize that the presidential campaigns in the past year have spent over half a billion dollars?

If you're looking to find a scapegoat, try the architect of the disaster, Phil Gramm, who was McCain's economic adviser up until he put his foot in his mouth with the "nation of whiners" comment.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...k/6007788.html

[eunhye]

I don't think McCain or Obama could help this country. I am not trying to divide sides. I think we need help from people who are not in office for the past 30 years, people like yourself Aurik, and others. That's the main issue. The old boy network, including women like Sarah Palin and Clinton, need to go.

Between 1995 and 2000 Gramm, who was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, received $1,000,914 in campaign contributions from the Securities & Investment industry.[7]

[archibaldcrane]

I have a hard time seeing people like Sarah Palin and Barack Obama as part of the government's "old guard".