What are you?

[brichter]

You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and 2 small children. Suddenly, an Islamic terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes iwth you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a loaded colt .45 and are an expert shot. Having only mere seconds before the terrorist reaches you and your family, you must decide what to do.

Democrats Answer:
Well that's not enough information to answer the question!!
Does the man look poor?
Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire this attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about my kids?
Could I possibly disarm him by swinging the gun as a club and knocking the knife away from his hands?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the gun have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what messagfe does this send to society and my children?
Is it possible that he would be happy with killing only me?
Does he definitly want to kill me, or would he be content to just wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family escape while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 911?
Why is the street so deserted?
We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day, and make this a happier, healthier street which would discourage such behavior! This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with friends for a few days and try to come to a consensus

Republicans Answer:

BANG!

Redneck's Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! click
{sounds of reloading}
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Daughter: "Nice grouping daddy! Where those Winchester Silver tips or hollow points?"
Son: "Git-R-Done!!!! I call dibs on the next one!"
Wife "You are NOT mounting this one over the fireplace and that's final!"

[stayouttadabunker]

What would be the Southern Democrats answer? 

[brichter]

What would be the Southern Democrats answer? 

Huh?   









 

[stayouttadabunker]

lol...Gun not needed.
Just fast feet and a swift kick to the family jewels...

[Buzz]

lol...Gun not needed.
Just fast feet and a swift kick to the family jewels...

He ain't got none,   he's a terrorist.   

[StatFreak]

lol...Gun not needed.
Just fast feet and a swift kick to the family jewels...

He ain't got none,   he's a terrorist.   

At least he won't have after Bunker gets through with him.

[Buzz]

 

[stayouttadabunker]

lol...Gun not needed.
Just fast feet and a swift kick to the family jewels...

He ain't got none,   he's a terrorist.   

At least he won't have after Bunker gets through with him.

Amazing...lol...I was looking at posts from 2 years ago today.
We weren't talking about terrorists but rather con1's and cat & dogs.
Stat used the word "Anthropomorphizing..."
To this day, I still think it was amazing how you actually used that word in a sentence...

[StatFreak]

Brichter, you should add "All of the above" to your poll.    Now I realize that "none of the above" might make more sense, but "all of the above" better fits the spirit of this thread.

And what would the "All of the above" guy do? That's easy!

He'd reach under his coat, open the snap on the $500 holster he purchased with passive income from his stock portfolio, pull out the gun that his mother gave him on his sixth birthday, and shoot the terrorist with bullets that he bought from Walmart with his welfare check. (Remember, he has no active income, i.e., "job".)

Then he'd pull out his I-Phone and make three calls: One to the ACLU to help the widow of the terrorist he just shot sue the state for not protecting her husband's religious rights, one to FOX news to tell his story and make himself a hero for taking out the SOB, and one to a taxidermist to have the guy's head mounted on the gun rack of his pickup.   

[StatFreak]

Amazing...lol...I was looking at posts from 2 years ago today.
We weren't talking about terrorists but rather con1's and cat & dogs.
Stat used the word "Anthropomorphizing..."
To this day, I still think it was amazing how you actually used that word in a sentence...

... and to this day I still  don't know what it means. 

[PLUNGER BOY]

you just wing him with the 45 cal and while he is taking time to stand back up .go back to the car  pull out the 50 cal browning and turn him into pink mist

[gcmommy]

 

[tacman]

Sh*t, one terrorist and he's only got a knife? I'd let the wife beat his a$$ and make bets with the kids about how long it would take. I wouldn't even get involved unless there were several of them and better armed!

 Dan (tacman)

 

[Buzz]

Look at that,she gets three votes, I'll bet she's sleeping with the BOSS  JMO/b] 

[brichter]

We saw them this summer...

[LauraAZ]

You forgot a few of the republican responses

1. Call for a 50% reduction in taxes for everyone making more than a million dollars a year.
2. Give Haliburtin and black water no-bid contracts to eliminate deserted streets across the country.
3. Declare war on Argentina. (since they have oil)
4. Secretly wiretap everyone in the country who owns any kind of knife.
5. Claim it wouldn't have happened if there were less regulations on wall street and the banks.
6. Blame it on:
    Obama, healthcare, democrats, gays, anyone who dosen't attend their church, or watch Fox News, and social security.
7. Call for the election of someone really stupid like Palin

[brichter]

You forgot a few of the republican responses

5. Claim it wouldn't have happened if there were less regulations on wall street and the banks.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/VgctSIL8Lhs&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/VgctSIL8Lhs&rel=0</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/iW5qKYfqALE&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/iW5qKYfqALE&rel=0</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/2UZ9l_AxKjA&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/2UZ9l_AxKjA&rel=0</a>


 

Now, hopefully the threadjack is over and we can get back to the humor. 

[StatFreak]

You forgot a few of the republican responses

1. Call for a 50% reduction in taxes for everyone making more than a million dollars a year.
2. Give Haliburtin and black water no-bid contracts to eliminate deserted streets across the country.
3. Declare war on Argentina. (since they have oil)
4. Secretly wiretap everyone in the country who owns any kind of knife.
5. Claim it wouldn't have happened if there were less regulations on wall street and the banks.
6. Blame it on:
    Obama, healthcare, democrats, gays, anyone who dosen't attend their church, or watch Fox News, and social security.
7. Call for the election of someone really stupid like Palin

 

[brichter]

And I'll bet you didn't even watch the videos... 

[Buzz]

I did.  

And I'll bet you didn't even watch the videos... 

[LauraAZ]

I was going to let this go but since you ask...

I don't watch fox news propaganda. The clip about Barney promoting home
ownership dosen't really say much except that none of the politicians thought
the bubble would burst. The real cause for the financial crisis was the total
deregulation of the financial industry. This was spearheaded by the GOP but
also supported by some democrats.

Videos can be made to show any point of view when taken out of
context or edited. At this point, I think its time to fire all the politicians
and put in new ones but add two more rules. Anyone who wants the
job is automatically prohibited from holding office. Draft them all.

The other rule would be that anyone holding public office must pass a
lie detector test every 30 days that they haven't received anything from
anyone to influence their vote. Fail once and they are out and investigated.
Making bribery a capitol offense may also help. Outlaw all campaign contributions
over $5 and make the TV stations provide free campaign ads as part of their
license requirement to "serve the public intrest".

[LauraAZ]

Oh, I forgot to add.
   If you like videos on this topic, I'd like to suggest:
 "Capitalism; A Love Story"
 "Sicko"
 "Farenheit 911"

All truth, and lots of fun too 

[brichter]

Since you completely hijacked the thread, which was originally  some humor about individuals, not politicians, here we go:

My comment about watching the videos was directed at David, not at you.

The videos are not about Barney Frank promoting home ownership, they are about him denying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in any danger of insolvency.The real cause of the credit crunch was the systematic deregulation of the loan process and qualifications, which started under the CRA, Bill Clinton's baby. I remember the days when you actually needed a down payment to buy a house, but that qualification went out the window quite a long time ago (interest-only ARMs, which were used for mortgages while the down payment loans were being paid off). There was also a time when you needed to validate your income, same demise as the down payment requirement (stated-income loans). And many politicians did think the bubble would burst. The republicans pushed for tighter regulation in 04 and 05, but they didn't have the votes to pass it.

You don't need to listen to the fox news drivel at the beginning, just listen to Frank's words. They are not edited or taken out of context, you can find the transcripts online as well and they bear the videos out.
 
To your point on Fox News: Michael Moore has made a lifetime of income pandering to the left with edits, out-of-context quotes, and blatant lies as well, and he's not the only one on the left that behaves this way. I see from your links that you're a big fan of his, I like the way you promote his work as being "all true". I haven't heard anything that funny in a long time, even his proponents recognize this. 

Here's a little light reading on Fahrenheit 911: http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/f911 
Here's the same for Capitalism: a Love Story: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/oct/01/michael-moore-movie-factcheck/
and I won't even go into Bowling for Columbine.
You can find more of the same all over the web, from both liberal and conservative sites. Moore is recognized as one of the most factually-challenged movie makers by folks on both sides of the aisle.

The problem is, both political parties are buried neck-deep in a substance with a really foul stench (being polite here). Just as you can pull corrupt republican's names out of a hat, you can pull democrat's names. They're all in it to screw the people. 

Your line on the current set of politicians is pretty much in line with mine, though, with one additional restriction of mine: the federal government needs to only govern in matters that cannot be controlled by the states, as it was intended from the beginning. The feds spend too much time involved in local and state politics and business, and unfortunately it's not going to change. It started back in the 50s and has been going strong ever since, Obama is just furthering the cause as have his predecessors for many decades. The fed gov't is too big and collapsing under its own weight, and the way they are printing money, our economy is done, might as well stick a fork in it. We might even resort back to a collection of states as it was in the beginning, with no federal government to speak of the way things are going now.

I've been advocating media restrictions for years, but I'm a bit more militant than you on that subject: The stations also have to provide equal time for all politicians and both sides of every issue since these media moguls always see fit to try to impress their political beliefs on their viewers, even if it comes to publishing and broadcasting out-and-out lies. Did you ever notice the headlines are on page 1 and the retractions are buried in the middle of the last section, just before the Classifieds? 

[StatFreak]

And I'll bet you didn't even watch the videos... 

You're right.    I was in humor mode. 

NOTE: Bill, I've been typing for a while, so understand that I started this well before your last post, which I mostly agree with.


Barney Frank definitely screwed up, but I don't let the republicans off the hook. GW Bush had an overwhelming republican majority during his first term in office, and they also turned a blind eye to the potential crisis, and in fact enacted legislation to relax banking and mortgage lending regulations. It can well be argued that these relaxations in regulation contributed greatly to our country's current economic situation.

The beginning of the first Fox News video you posted points out that the Bush administration was warned as early as 2001, and their footage of Barney Frank is dated 2003. What they conveniently DON'T say is that this was back when the republicans had full control over the Senate, the House, and the presidency.

Then Federal Reserve Governor Edward Gramlich, appointed by President Bill Clinton by the way, repeatedly warned the Bush administration about the dangers of predatory lending in the sup-prime market during his tenure, which ended in 2005, although he was generally for sub-prime lending.

In the same video (the first), Alan Greenspan(R) is quoted as opposing the continued expansion of GSEs (Fanny and Freddie) in Feb of 2005. Here's what he said in Feb of 2004, exactly one year earlier, almost to the day, when he apparently felt that the housing sector was doing fine and praised homeowners for getting second mortgages to pay off other debt.

...Refinancing has allowed homeowners both to take advantage of lower rates to reduce their monthly payments and, in many cases, to extract some of the built-up equity in their homes. These two effects seem to have roughly offset each other, suggesting that homeowners might set a target for their mortgage payments as a proportion of income and adjust their borrowing accordingly. Indeed, the surge in mortgage refinancings likely improved rather than worsened the financial condition of the average homeowner. Some of the equity extracted through mortgage refinancing was used to pay down more expensive, non-tax-deductible consumer debt or used to make purchases that would otherwise have been financed by more expensive and less tax-favored credit. Indeed, the refinancing phenomenon has very likely been a supportive factor for the general economy.
...
American homeowners clearly like the certainty of fixed mortgage payments. This preference is in striking contrast to the situation in some other countries, where adjustable-rate mortgages are far more common and where efforts to introduce American-type fixed-rate mortgages generally have not been successful. ...
...
American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home.

Conclusion
In evaluating household debt burdens, one must remember that debt-to-income ratios have been rising for at least a half century. With household assets rising as well, the ratio of net worth to income is currently somewhat higher than its long-run average. So long as financial intermediation continues to expand, both household debt and assets are likely to rise faster than income. Without an examination of what is happening to both assets and liabilities, it is difficult to ascertain the true burden of debt service. Overall, the household sector seems to be in good shape, and much of the apparent increase in the household sector's debt ratios over the past decade reflects factors that do not suggest increasing household financial stress. And, in fact, during the past two years, debt service ratios have been stable.

Still, at the end of the day, I blame the senior officers of the countries largest banks. They CHOSE to make sub-par loans on a massive scale out of sheer greed, knowing that as long as the government was backing the loans, they didn't have to give a damn if the customers ultimately defaulted.

You can blame the democrats for sticking their heads in the sand, or more likely for responding to pressure from lobbyists and big business PAC money, or you can blame the republicans for paying lip service to enacting tougher GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprises) policy while doing little about it and actually relaxing banking regulations, but corporate greed ultimately brought us to this economic crisis.

[StatFreak]

...
Your (LauraAZ) line on the current set of politicians is pretty much in line with mine, though, with one additional restriction of mine: the federal government needs to only govern in matters that cannot be controlled by the states, as it was intended from the beginning. The feds spend too much time involved in local and state politics and business, and unfortunately it's not going to change. It started back in the 50s and has been going strong ever since, Obama is just furthering the cause as have his predecessors for many decades. The fed gov't is too big and collapsing under its own weight, and the way they are printing money, our economy is done, might as well stick a fork in it. We might even resort back to a collection of states as it was in the beginning, with no federal government to speak of the way things are going now.

I've been advocating media restrictions for years, but I'm a bit more militant than you on that subject: The stations also have to provide equal time for all politicians and both sides of every issue since these media moguls always see fit to try to impress their political beliefs on their viewers, even if it comes to publishing and broadcasting out-and-out lies. Did you ever notice the headlines are on page 1 and the retractions are buried in the middle of the last section, just before the Classifieds? 

I wish I could disagree with your gloomy assessment, but I can't. The bigger picture, beyond the current real estate collapse, is that we have become a nation of consumers instead of producers. We outsource our labor, import most of our finished and complex goods, and continue to go further and further into debt at every scale one cares to examine (Federal, State, County, City, and private citizen.) This kind of debt cannot be sustained without serious consequences, and I believe (and hope that I'm wrong) that our current economic depression is only the beginning.