Politics: Or other things that don't matter

[Atelo]

Isbeth speaks

*crickets*












kidding of course

[fonebone]

I like what she said. there is really nothing to add or take away. I dont really think that what she said had anything damaging for either side but the things I liked most about what she said and what I agree with are below.

Most of those students believe that they will never be able to go to school so their best hopes are to work hard for their living and have families. Those kids are living in homes of incomes between 15-28k (if they're lucky).

. . .

I'm sorry, I believe in starting off with making the right choices, good timing, talent, chance, knowing the right people, being in the right places, having your connections, and especially having a good start in life as the key to wealth. Hard work is what we do to fill up what we are lacking.

it is the beliefe that they are either stuck there and there is nothing they can do about it or the beliefe that with some hard work they can shake off their chains and work towards something better. all that is said above come into play. I would think right choices would be the first on the list as she put it as well. it was very well put.

[fonebone]

Here was an interesting read that I came across. I dont agree that this guy turned it into a McCain vs Obama thing but, I do believe it is more a Repulican / Democrat issue.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

[Isbeth]

Isbeth speaks

*crickets*


kidding of course

Lol! I was just thinking either I killed the thread, which would be fine by me... or it is taking you guys this many days to read the thing!

[Phire]

Here was an interesting read that I came across. I dont agree that this guy turned it into a McCain vs Obama thing but, I do believe it is more a Repulican / Democrat issue.

What a beautiful article. No matter what side you are voting for, his comments on honor and honesty in the new media are right on. While I personally believe the US media is heavily biased towards Obama, there has certainly been lack of honor on the other bench as well. But as we all know, truth doesn't sell as much as drama.

Unfortunately, it is things like This that are crashing down on the Country.

[Antilikos]

/pm Fonebone

Fone, that post was completely irresponsible. It is neither sexy nor supports Obama = fail. If people wanted the truth they would pull their heads out of the sand. The fact that you are seeing 51% of the people with their heads in the sand and still pointing these things out is amazing. You should just crawl back to your freedom and liberty loving hole and conserve your resources for the coming maelstrom.

/mt

[Atelo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7DjSmIXyZ4

[Mihito]

Here's to the Republicans with their head in the sand...

The bailout and your tax dollars at work

John McCain's previous economic experience

All politicians have skeletons in the closet, or at the very least, some questionable decisions / dealings in their history. If you're looking to find the perfect candidate then I'm afraid you're going to be sorely disappointed.

What Fone posted may in fact be true, but again, it works both ways. Look at the FOX network which has been the Republican mouthpiece for years. Intentionally distorting the news and reporting opinion more so than the "Fair and Balanced" truth which they claim.

The truth about FOXNEWS

Keep in mind that the Republican Vice Presidential nominee isn't exactly the sharpest pencil in the box. Just look up her interviews with Katie Couric. At this point it ceases, even for me, to be a partisan issue. This is about voting for someone who has at least a fraction of intelligence and ability to lead this country out of the current downturn. I won't sit here and claim that the Democratic Party will be the cure all, but I do know that the Republican Party had it's turn in office and couldn't cut it. Now it's time for a change.

Mateo

[ascanius]

/pm Fonebone

Fone, that post was completely irresponsible. It is neither sexy nor supports Obama = fail. If people wanted the truth they would pull their heads out of the sand. The fact that you are seeing 51% of the people with their heads in the sand and still pointing these things out is amazing. You should just crawl back to your freedom and liberty loving hole and conserve your resources for the coming maelstrom.

/mt

Except is was ultimately Greenspan who should have called the foul, but he was too busy touting a free market will ultimately regulate and correct itself. Also, there were a number of factors that led to the current crisis and only one of them was caused by democrats wanting the poor to be able to get their own homes. To solely blame this on the democrats isn't just ludicrous, its ignorant.

[Phire]

What Fone posted may in fact be true, but again, it works both ways. Look at the FOX network which has been the Republican mouthpiece for years. Intentionally distorting the news and reporting opinion more so than the "Fair and Balanced" truth which they claim.

So the count is what 1 vs 100? The Republicans get FOX to distort for their side and the Democrats get everyone else? It is funny that you would pick the one major news organization leaning to the right and claim distortion whilst simultaneously discrediting all the distortion ALL the other major news organizations provide to the left.

This is about voting for someone who has at least a fraction of intelligence and ability to lead this country out of the current downturn. I won't sit here and claim that the Democratic Party will be the cure all, but I do know that the Republican Party had it's turn in office and couldn't cut it. Now it's time for a change.

Keep in mind that current economic problems relating to the housing market and lending institutions originate from a prior Democratic turn.