OT: US Pres election

[HoneyBadger]

I vote so I can complain about who gets elected. If you don't (or if your candidate wins), then you've no right to--and I can hardly pass up a chance at righteous indignation.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

It's not intentional, Quantum Mechani, it's instinctual. Human brains are just not designed in such a way for us to automatically care very much about more than the people in our immediate surroundings. We're not hardwired to properly process pain and tragedy on a global scale. Any additional compassion we may feel towards people in other countries is supplimental and beyond the normal human scope of interest.

That's understandable- I don't think it's avoidable or even necessarily desirable that the suffering of a stranger mean as much as the suffering of anyone you know personally. But this is an entirely different matter, sorting people by their nationality/race/culture. To many Americans (and probably similarly for other nationalities) the suffering of an American they don't know means a lot more than just a person in general they do not know... and that's something in my opinion far less excusable.

[Micah]

I did some research into this a couple of weeks ago, one of the facts I picked up was that if we got our healthcare system up to the standards of the top countries in the world we would save 100,000 American lives each year. That's 33 times the death toll of 9/11, and that's PER YEAR, so just over 230 times as many people over the remainder of the Bush presidency. I'm pretty sure the Iraq war funding could have been better spent saving American lives by fixing our broken-*** healthcare system instead of using it to kill people, including plenty of innocents. I'm sure there are plenty of other things we could be doing instead, but I like this one for an example.

Also, WRT global warming, I can't see how anyone can look at this: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/tr..._data_mlo.html and not at least wonder what effect that might have on things.

Oh, and Palin installed a sheriff in Wasilla that forced women who had been raped to pay for their own forensic test kits, just in case they hadn't been traumatized enough.

Obama sure as hell isn't as shiny as a lot of his supporters make him out to be, but in this case I must say that "bad" is a whole lot better than "worse." Sure, I'd love to see pretty much the whole US political system razed to the ground and rebuilt, but unless that's gonna happen in the next month and a half I'll stick with voting for the best choice I can for now.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by PashaDawg

As these loans became more and more profitable (because there was *a lot* of money to be made), there was increased pressure from the free market to find more borrowers. After the sources of responsible, reliable borrowers were tapped out, the mortgage industry needed to lower their standards for qualifying borrowers for loans (e.g., shifting from documentary proof of income to no such requirement). Again, there was no concern for the loan originator, because they planned to sell the loan to Wall Street. They just wanted to collect their initial financing fees, which were substantial.

To keep the customers coming, the industry devised inventive types of loans to get less loan-worthy borrowers into higher priced homes (e.g., adjustable rate mortgages and interest-only mortgages) that eventually trapped borrowers who bought homes that they probably should never have purchased. For example, the adjustable rate mortgage would have a 2-year teaser rate that was more affordable, and when the rate eventually adjusted after 2 years, the monthly payments would jump up substantially. (I think it is a two way problem. The home borrower was not paying attention to what he/she could afford, and the loan originator was pushing to lend as much as possible (to get higher fees) while disregarding the likely ability of the borrower to repay.)

I actually purchased a home based on "stated income". Both my brother and I were doing a lot of work as a private business, without documentation to prove that income. We jumped into the middle of the housing'mortgage boom with no problems, and great expectations.

2 years later, things were looking alright, and we wanted to consolidate outside debts into the mortgage, and at the same time refinance at a lower rate. We got duped into an ARM after a lot of talk that was getting us nowhere, and we were assured that our rate would likely go down slightly in 2 more years, or if it went up, that it couldn't go up enough to really matter.

2 years later, the ARM matured, and we saw a significant increase in mortgage payment. 6 months later, and they bumped it again. Total increase to our mortgage? 30%. I'm sorry, we were not irresponsible, nor were we unable to pay the mortgage that we signed. However, we were not able to pay a mortgage 30% larger than we signed - especially not as my health declined, and budgets tightened.

This was purely predatory economic behavior, and is indicative of the focal problem with free market capitalism. Those who have the money and power are largely incentivized to do -anything- in their power to maximize profits. The profit is all that matters at the end of their day, because it is a measure of the growth of their personal power.


If you don't believe that the current administration has been all about the pursuit of wealth and power, then I can only encourage to look more closely at the issues. To stop, and actually do some hunting around on the internet to see what is currently going on, and who is scratching whose back. You may find yourself extremely surprised. Oh and for the record, Bush is an absolute moron, who is likely becoming senile. He didn't dupe anyone, he very poorly and clumsily repeated lies that were fed to him by much more intelligent and cunning players in the game - he was just a puppet, or a muppet, if you will.

[llamabeast]

When people suggest global warming doesn't exist, or even may not exist, it makes me want to cry.

There are few scientific theories so well supported by evidence, I believe. If it was in people's interests to believe it, everyone would have thirty years ago.

As a scientist who studied a lot of atmospheric chemistry in my undergrad, seriously it's a no-brainer.

The trouble with all these things is that in a world with so many facts, you can always find a few to support any argument. So the anti-GW people can put together a very convincing argument, backed up by real facts. If you're not willing to spend a lot of time on it, it's hard to distinguish it from, say, a pro-GW argument which is backed up by like a hundred times as many facts. Because they can't fit that many facts into a coherent argument.

/End of distressed rant

[lch]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

When people suggest global warming doesn't exist, or even may not exist, it makes me want to cry.

There are few scientific theories so well supported by evidence, I believe. If it was in people's interests to believe it, everyone would have thirty years ago.

Actually, I believe that evolution is even more backed up by evidence, but there are still some people who opt not to believe that. Hard to fathom for me how you can accept genetics for solving crimes and making cosmetics but don't accept it when comparing genetic material of creatures, or how you don't see the strong hints during the evolution of the human fetus.

The global warming one still perplexes me. Twenty years ago, when I was a kid, it was presented to me as a fact, there were even doomsday scenarios about an unstoppable end of the world where mankind would inevitably maneuver itself into, one way or the other. Back then, you vowed to change this, you didn't want to hurt your environment after all. In the meantime, you accepted that it isn't easy to solve and tried to always look for "greener" ways to do things. Now suddenly the US begins to see the big honking unmistakeable evidence, as if they found it hiding under a rock or behind a bush twenty years later, and even get a big political campaign around it, with former vice presidents writing bestseller books about it. Duh, slow on the uptake much? Guess it was the media difference.

About the presidential election: That Bush was voted once was a mistake, that he was voted twice made me lose faith in the voters. It seems that people are influenced a lot more by the political campaigns than I'd like, in which the republicans have more success by appealing to the voters' emotions and offering simple solutions which are easy to understand and believe in, even if they might be useless. The democrats only seem to be able to convince intellectuals and do-gooders, while the republicans win by having the ordinary people on their side, the mass of the voters. As much as I'd like them to, I don't see the democrats winning the election.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

We can't predict the weather a week in advance accurately. Yet we're expected to believe the "projections" that are months or years in the future.

Actually we're a lot better about predicting the weather than we were 20 years ago. Back then, whatever they told you in the news about tomorrow's weather, in 70% of cases they were wrong. Now the forecast for tomorrow usually is true, and the three-day forecast is going to be true most of the time, too. I expect that this is because of the increased computing power over the years, and because more measurements have been done to better predict what might or might not happen next. Weather is a chaotic process, you can't just calculate the outcome with all the imperfect inputs from measures. Still, you can make predictions based on what you have seen before.

Your statement that nothing can be forseen without failure, therefore no predictions about the future hold any meaning are too religious that I'm going to argue much more about it. Seems like you really are more interested in keeping the status quo and getting distracted while waiting for Godot.

[lch]

More revelations ahead. I'm responding to this stuff as I read it.

Originally Posted by Trumanator

However, the reason the US is the presumed world leader has a lot more to do with the realities of economics and world peacekeeping than arrogance.

To be true, as stated before by others like Edi, the US isn't seen much like peacekeeping anymore, more like warmongering. Preferably in other places of the world, not just on their own territory. Hey, it worked for 50 years and kept everybody distracted, why change it?

Originally Posted by Trumanator

The US is still the worlds largest economy I think, and provides the vast majority of forces to any kind of peacekeeping operation that the UN orchestrates.

The US has the biggest army in the world and spends the most money on it every year, yes. I just checked that and had it confirmed pretty well here: http://www.globalissues.org/article/...itary-spending

About the world's largest economy, I've been reading my newspapers on the weekend when they were analyzing the Lehman Brothers collapse, and what they wrote about the US economy was that it was based on credits, with the credit card being a consistent part of the pocket, and that the US Americans basically have been living above their financial circumstances for years and economists have been warning since a long time that a radical change of course has to happen sooner or later if this continues. So far, with the US being a big consumer like that it was a win-win for everybody because they imported a lot more than they exported, but it can't be expected to continue like this forever, the Dollar is going to decline in value.

Originally Posted by Trumanator

I don't know what you think but as far as my limited knowledge of other governments goes I think that you could describe the current French, Italian, and German governments as somewhat "pro-american" to use the media phrase.

As Edi pointed out, the US is of course an important and powerful ally. You can't simply ignore it. But the way that the US has been handling international politics under Bush has caused dismay, especially among the people. It's hard to stomach that the UN is being seen as "ineffectual and useless" by lots of US citizens instead of considering themselves a part of it, just because they think it's okay to go by whatever serves US American interests the most. "Pro-American" was once, to be true the people have now been leaning more towards "Anti-American" lately, especially because of the Iraq war which caused a lot of bad blood. We won't be parading around and burn USA flags, of course. But we're doubting that the USA really has "world peace" in mind and the trust is gone.

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Not to mention that I have yet to see a useful idea come from the international community as far as terrorism goes. The main idea seems to be capitulate and hope they leave us alone.

The US wasn't the only target for terroristic attacks. You might have overheard about those in the UK. In Germany, there were some terroristic attacks which fortunately didn't succeed and/or were prevented in time. Diplomacy isn't capitulation, no, it isn't waving guns around either.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Eh?? 1: Who else could you vote for.

You could vote for whichever of the fourteen "third-party" candidates have managed to get on the ballot in your state.

I've considered myself a Republican since I was old enough to understand the concept of political parties, but the neoconservatives who've controlled the party for the last decade or so have proven themselves so incapable of governing that I don't think the second coming of Abraham Lincoln could win on the Republican ticket this year. I'm actually hoping that we Republicans suffer such an embarrassing defeat at all levels of government that it will shake most of the deadwood out of the party leadership. That will give the Democrats four to eight years to demonstrate that they're equally incompetent at running the country, hopefully leading to a similar purge on their side of the aisle.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Iraq has almost finished Al Quaeda. Afghanistan might have hurt them, but the losses they took in Iraq to no discernable result killed most of their support and destroyed a large portion of their leadership.

Oh please. Do you really believe that? The Iraq war was an invasion of the country by the USA army. I don't expect the people there will forget that. What would you do if your country would have been invaded by a vastly superior military force and thrown into chaos for years to come? Would you attempt to understand the ulterior motives of the attacker? Doesn't seem so given the 9/11 reaction.

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

And aside from that, I find it a little chilling how easily nationalism clouds the way casualty figures are read. I mean, regardless of if the war is an ultimately a 'success', hundreds of thousands of died. It is difficult to imagine that _not_ having the Iraq war would have had even vaguely comparable numbers in total human deaths. I realize the inevitable comeback here is 'But saddam killed people', but it is exceedingly doubtful he would have wracked up even close to the death count by being in power the last few years.

I am stumped by that everytime, too. The CNN calculated that the 9/11 attack killed 2,973 non-terrorists. That's a tragedy, for sure, but as a number it really isn't that much. Compare that to the death toll of war - among citizens, not soldiers, again. Or to the death toll from natural catastrophes. How are those three thousand lives any more valuable than other human lives? The 9/11 attack came as a shock, of course, but the reaction it caused was largely hysterical. It's not like Al Quaeda or anybody else would be able to start a real war or even fight on US American grounds then or at any time in the future. Judging by what they can do, almost everybody is safe from terrorists.