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Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Occupy Wall Street, London and Evereywhere Else | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Is there an occupy Paris? Moscow? Beijing? Johannesburg? Mexico City? Brasilia? Madrid? Kuala Lampur? Bangkok? Canberra? Nairobi? Karachi? New Delhi? Warsaw? Prague? Riyadh? Tehran? Jerusalem? how global is it? You don't know that, but you do know that it's been over-reported by the media?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
It's not clear what upsets conservatives more: that facts exist, or that the media report them.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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George Washington writes: Thomas Jefferson is a silly old grouchy-pants. Did a journalist run over his dog or something? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Hmm, let's have some real photographs of teabaggers.
Of course cameras have a well-known liberal bias, and cannot aspire to the level of truthiness achieved by a right-winger drawing pictures of imaginary things he made up.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Yeah, they are complaining about some of the same things that everybody is, but not everybody is "occupying". Too; why Wall Street? That's what I'm getting at: why occupy Wall Street? why occupy Wall Street? This may interest you.
Yeah, see, this seems better to me. Actually do something, don't just bitch in the streets. Suggestions? What they're doing by bitching is putting pressure on politicians to do something. OWS, after all, don't get to make the laws.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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lol. so what? what was the cost of OWS? They clean up behind themselves for free, unlike the teabaggers sponging off the taxpayer.
how many rapes I don't know how many more or less OWSers have been raped than teabaggers. What would be the point if I did know?
... and arrests Ah, yes. If the police arrest them, they're in the wrong. As the Nazi said to the Jew.
... and destruction of property You tell me.
OWS is for parasites and criminals. Evidence?
The point of your picture is obscure. So far as I know, Obama and Pelosi have described neither group as "terrorists", possibly because Obama and Pelosi are sane. I shall say to you what I have said to the more cryptic of our creationist friends: it is no use you making oblique allusions to the world in your head, because since I do not live in it I am unable to follow your references to it.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
just a parting shot. If your point was that the police are behaving like jerks, then your point is well-taken. Otherwise, not so much.
If this was true then you would have never responded. but you did respond, why? because the truth hurts, don't it? Because it is true that I didn't see what your point is, therefore I responded by saying that I couldn't see what your point is. Perhaps someone could buy you a copy of Thinking For Dummies for Christmas. If you still don't want to say what your point is, that's quite understandable, given that it was probably gormlessly stupid.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Why are conservatives REALLY anti-OWS (aside from Fox news telling them to be against it)? Does there have to be another reason why conservatives have opinions? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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That's not what most parents, teachers and schools told the kids. We warned our boys to the contrary; not to expect anything to be handed to them. They would have to do the footwork to find a job. They were advised to do things that mattered and to purpose in themselves to do them. They had to work hard and strive to make themselves secure. But what you say is ambiguous. These are weasel words. The fact is that the older generation told their kids that if they worked hard in school, they'd get a good job. So they did not expect anything to be "handed to them" --- they were told that they could earn it through hard work. And what you have now is people saying --- "But I worked hard. I was honest, always. I listened to my teachers. I never did drugs. I stayed in school. I didn't get pregnant. I scored very high on my exams. I was obedient to my parents. I went to college like they said I should. And now here I am, and you know what? My parents told me that if I didn't do all those things, I'd end up flipping burgers in McDonalds. But instead I did everything they told me, and I can't get a job flipping burgers in McDonalds." They didn't expect anything to be "handed to them". They expected to earn their position in society through hard work and intelligence and honesty and perseverance. And now they find out that these virtues are not enough, and that the American Dream is dead.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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The only hard work you've described is school, Dr. Adequate. Well yes, what with small children not being able to get jobs as stevedores. What I am trying to communicate to you is the frustration of someone who has spent his life doing everything right, and then finds that there's no reward for that any more.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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So far all you've conveyed to me that they worked at or did right was their schooling. What else have they done right besides study for school? What else could they do right? Going to school is what school-age children do. So none of them has completed astronaut training or become President of Nicaragua. What's your point?
Nearly all of the ones that I know of who didn't make it in life in the capitalist land of the free are the lazy, the feeders at the public trough, the addicts, the drunkards, the street people like so many in the Occupy W.S. loud mouth types, the ones who spend recklessly, the ones who borrow beyond their means, the thieves, etc, etc. Clearly we move in very different circles. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010.
Let's look at General Electric, at the top of the list. Their profits in that period were $10.4 billion. Taxes paid: $0. Money received in government handouts (tax "rebates" on the taxes that they didn't actually pay): $4.7 billion. Now, perhaps I am economically naive. Perhaps I don't understand the world of high finance. Perhaps there is a really good reason why a company which by its own unaided efforts could make $5.7 billion should have that topped up to $10.4 billion using taxes paid by ordinary citizens and by small (or at least smaller) businesses. It would have to be a damn good reason, but perhaps there is one, and perhaps some of the conservatives round here could tell us what it is, some time when they're not too busy condemning the provision of food stamps to people who don't make ten billion dollars a year. But I would be more readily convinced that there was a good reason if G.E. hadn't also spent $84 million on attempting to influence the political process. After all, if there really was a damn good reason --- if it really is better and wiser that this should be so --- then couldn't that reason appeal to legislators simply on its own merits? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I think the responsible thing to do would be to get a 2nd or 3rd opinion. But everyone wanted to make bad loans. The second opinion would have been: "You don't want to let them give you a mortgage, you want us to do it." And really, how was an ordinary American to realize that people wanted to offer him a loan that they believed he wasn't good for? That's not the sort of thing you'd suspect, is it? If I loaned you money, you would suppose, wouldn't you, that I expected you to be able to pay it back? --- not that I'd come up with a clever scam whereby I'd make money if you couldn't. Instead of putting the blame entirely on the customers, here's some people you might think about blaming:
Kroft: How much fraud was there at Countrywide? Foster: From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was-- it appeared systemic. It, it wasn't just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals. Kroft: What you seem to be saying was it was just a way of doing business? Foster: Yes. In 2007, Foster sent a team to the Boston area to search several branch offices of Countrywide's subprime division - the division that lent to borrowers with poor credit. The investigators rummaged through the office's recycling bins and found evidence that Countrywide loan officers were forging and manipulating borrowers' income and asset statements to help them get loans they weren't qualified for and couldn't afford. Foster: All of the-- the recycle bins, whenever we looked through those they were full of, you know, signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied, you know, or faxed and then the-- you know, the creation thrown-- thrown in the recycle bin. Kroft: And the incentive for the people at Countrywide to do that was what? Foster: The loan officers received bonuses, commissions. They were compensated regardless of the quality of the loan. There's no incentive for quality. The incentive was to fund the loan. And that's-- that's gonna drive that type of behavior. Kroft: They were committing a crime? Foster: Yes. After Foster's investigation, Countrywide closed six of its eight branches in the Boston region and 44 out of 60 employees were fired or quit. Kroft: Do you think that this was just the Boston office? Foster: No. No, I know it wasn't just the Boston office. What was going on in Boston was also going on in Chicago, and Miami, and Detroit, and Las Vegas and, you know-- Phoenix and in all of the big markets all over Florida. After the Boston investigation, Foster says Countrywide's subprime division began systematically concealing evidence of fraud from her in violation of company policy ... Now me, I think that the people who deliberately perpetrate criminal fraud are more blameworthy than their victims. But then, I'm one of them liberals. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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nothing is ever our fault all the mistakes we make are someone else's fault, because they sold us beachfront property in Alaska and we bought it, because they said it was a good deal, and we listened to them. why? because they were the "experts" (they even told us themselves that they were the experts). All the bad stuff in the world is caused by someone else --- WE ARE THE 99% I think you'll find that 99% of people will agree with me that fraudsters are more culpable than their victims. As for "beachfront property in Alaska" the analogy is inexact. It's just common sense that beachfront property in Alaska isn't going to be warm and sunny. It is not common sense that a businessman out to make a profit would lend us money with the expectation of not getting it back. That's the opposite of common sense. The average American knows that Alaska is cold, but did not know and could hardly be expected to know that our economy was designed by a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and M. C. Escher. As to whether it was caused by someone else, I, like most people, neither made nor accepted a bad loan. The sub-prime crisis really was caused by people other than me; but I still have to suck on the consequences of fraud and incompetence on the part of others. I think it is not unreasonable for me to be peeved. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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More on Countrywide. Apparently they're frauds and racists.
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history, saying that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom. [...] In addition, from 2004 to 2007 the peak of Wall Street firms’ demand for subprime loans that they purchased, bundled and resold as securities, a major cause of the ensuing financial crisis Countrywide allowed its brokers and employees to steer applicants who qualified for regular mortgages into a riskier and more expensive subprime loan. The odds of a minority applicant being steered into such a loan were more than twice as high as those for a non-Hispanic white borrower with a similar credit rating, the department said. About two-thirds of the victims were Hispanic and one-third were black, the department said. But wait! Didn't I hear on hate radio that the banks created all those subprime loans because of antidiscriminatory policies such as the CRA? Surely ... surely the whole problem was that the evil liberals wouldn't let them be mean to racial minorities? Well, now I'm all confused. Could Rush Limbaugh have been lying to us?
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