Election day.....

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The way I look at it ... wake up every morning and glad to see the Sun hasn't sent a coronal mass ejection our way ...
 
Goddamned politicians start campaigning 2 years before the election. Campaign finance reform is badly needed. They should not be able to raise (and blow) billions of dollars on this shit. And six months of campaigning ought to be more than enough.
 
MaxTwang said:
What "credit market safeguards"? Nothing has changed other than the banks aren't lending.
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Um, that's exactly the safeguards he was talking about. Banks will lend to me just fine because I have never missed a payment and have sufficient income to pay back. Are you blaming the banks for not lending money to folks with less than stellar credit rating? Sounds like a pretty good "safeguard" to me.
 
onemoreguitar said:
... You don't have to hate someone simply because you don't agree with them. I think the nation forgetting that fact is one of the biggest causes of the current mess.
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Totally agree. It's like both sides have some kind of need to believe the other is a demon. It's not enough for someone to just be wrong, they have to be evil.
 
plexi59 said:
Um, that's exactly the safeguards he was talking about. Banks will lend to me just fine because I have never missed a payment and have sufficient income to pay back. Are you blaming the banks for not lending money to folks with less than stellar credit rating? Sounds like a pretty good "safeguard" to me.
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The banks haven't been lending because declining property values (residential and commercial) make for bad collateral and an unstable job market make for high risk. As property values stabilize and unemployment drops we're seeing banks starting to lend again. The refi market is seeing new loan values greater than 100% of the home value, for now this is necessary to keep foreclosures down. Lending more than a home's value is part of what caused this mess - I had quite a few coworkers who had loans that automatically refinanced annually for 125% of the estimated value of the home (based on appreciation rates for the zip code). Programs such as these are still possible and someday we'll see a bubble again.
 
Rane said:
It's like both sides have some kind of need to believe the other is a demon. It's not enough for someone to just be wrong, they have to be evil.
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Each party has a vested interest in defeating the other party. Demonizing them is one way to accomplish this. This is the main disadvantage of any political party system.
 
MaxTwang said:
The banks haven't been lending because declining property values (residential and commercial) make for bad collateral and an unstable job market make for high risk. As property values stabilize and unemployment drops we're seeing banks starting to lend again. The refi market is seeing new loan values greater than 100% of the home value, for now this is necessary to keep foreclosures down. Lending more than a home's value is part of what caused this mess - I had quite a few coworkers who had loans that automatically refinanced annually for 125% of the estimated value of the home (based on appreciation rates for the zip code). Programs such as these are still possible and someday we'll see a bubble again.
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In other words, banks are not engaging in reckless lending at the moment. That's good, IMO. It shouldn't be _too_ easy for folks to bury themselves in debt they can't repay.
 
plexi59 said:
In other words, banks are not engaging in reckless lending at the moment. That's good, IMO. It shouldn't be _too_ easy for folks to bury themselves in debt they can't repay.
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Go back to the old mortgage model. 20% down and your payment, taxes and insurance cannot exceed 50% of your net income. Back when you saved for a decade to make your down payment, so you are fully vested in keeping your home, even if it meant a second job waiting tables or pumping gas.
 
luke said:
Go back to the old mortgage model. 20% down and your payment, taxes and insurance cannot exceed 50% of your net income. Back when you saved for a decade to make your down payment, so you are fully vested in keeping your home, even if it meant a second job waiting tables or pumping gas.
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That's exactly how I did it. Rented for 11 years until I could really afford it.
 
On the bright side it's only 2 more days until the start of the 2016 Presidential campaign!
 
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No worries guys. Ohio voters will decide for all of us. At least it is not Florida! I am depressed, but still managed to vote last week!

As to the banks not lending, the government gave them a load of money interest free, they turned around and lent it back to the government (bought bonds) for 2% interest. Talk about some dumb people in high places! My wife is a veteran and an IT director with good salary. We had 2 months from hell trying to get a loan to buy a new house. They even were questioning the money we moved between checking and saving. "Where did that money come from..???". You know, for someone that was able to see money coming in to one account, they sure are stupid.

Thanks guys, now I am riled up!!!
 
Xrocker said:
On the bright side it's only 2 more days until the start of the 2016 Presidential campaign!
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If only we were that lucky. With the race so tight, it will take 6 months to figure out who won and an intervention from the supreme court. Hanging chads any one???
 
There is a 5% chance it could end in a tie...In which case the senate would vote for the VP and the House would vote for the POTUS. Wouldn't it be fun to have a mixed ticket?
 
edawterb said:
There is a 5% chance it could end in a tie...In which case the senate would vote for the VP and the House would vote for the POTUS. Wouldn't it be fun to have a mixed ticket?
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A mixed ticket is a great idea. I would go further and have the presidency alternate between the parties with a mixed ticket.
 
There is currently a coalition government in the UK, what I think you are mentioning as a mixed ticket being similar.

I think it has possibly stopped either of the parties that make up the coalition pushing through some stuff without checks from the other. But on the other hand a ship might be better with one captain.
 
The problem with that scenario is that aside from being the tie breaking vote in the senate the VP could be relegated to retrieving coffee for POTUS.
 
The thing that really grinds my gears is that it's "Romney vs Obama". There are over 200 presidential candidates and most people can't even name 4 of them. Public office positions are supposed to be a duty that an exceptional person from the masses rises up to fill in addition to his every day responsibilities, but the media makes it impossible to actually elect the right person for the job and instead focuses on people who dedicate their lives to playing the system. Politics was never supposed to be a career, yet we have college degrees in "political science" and senators that spend decades in office. What we really need is election reform. Shift the focus to the actual issues instead of doing whatever you think is going to get you elected.

But, Sidivan, how could we improve the election process? I'm glad you asked.

Each state would hold an election, like a primary, but we end up with 50 candidates. From there, they go into a multi-state election, or "regional election". Ideally, you'll end up with 6-8 winners that now go on to the general election. The key here is you're only allowed to campaign in the states you're currently battling for, i.e. Stage 1 region is your own state, stage 2 is only the states in your region, etc... During each election, all candidates get equal time for debates BY LAW, which doesn't happen now.

So what changes?
By electing 1 candidate at the state level, we likely increase the amount of candidates running. This drastically increases the amount of money it would take to smear every single candidate except your own, helping to eliminate smear campaigns all together. Also, it breaks up a party system because your party would have to support at least 50 candidates in order to ensure the most number of candidates running. Currently, debates are sponsored by parties and therefore do not need to include every candidate, so the equal debate time law is necessary to ensure that the public is informed. Campaigning only in the region in which you're running saves us all the political ads we don't care about, but also ensures that a candidate can't campaign in "Key States" like Ohio for 2 years straight, unless they are Ohio's candidate.
 
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