Looking for suggestions in my argument with a con

[OmahaBlueDog]

I'm arguing (under my other nom de plume, EddieAlbania) with conservatives in Fremont, NE

http://www.fremonttribune.com/articles/2009/02/23/opinion/columns/doc499dc66e7082b904206533.txt

The first shot fired read:

<<VERY STUPID

You ask, "what is wrong with this picture?"

Only one thing...and it is not you..
you are doing the right thing!

The only thing wrong is too many Americans since the Clinton years got caught up in 'spending til you drop,'
and Clinton issued orders that low income to even middle income Americans were to be given loans: even if they could afford the house, with nothing down,etc. And now Americans will pay for the people who are REALLY dumb...
and pay for a long long long time.

Most people do not realize how far in debt the USA is going with King Obama's
$800 billion spending bill...think about this...if you went back to the
days of Jesus...about 2,000 years ago,
and you spent $1 million per 'day,' up
to 2009, that gives you some idea of how much money $800 billion is. And I am sure you've all seen on news programs that it is possible King Obama will ask for another $1 trillion....his
goal apparently is to transform the USA into a socialist country? Is this what King Obama meant by 'vote for me...vote for change?"

Thanks for listening!!!!>>

I fired back with:

<<I keep hearing people bleating about how it's such a shame their tax money goes to bail out these irresponsible souls who bought homes beyond their means. My, my - next I'll hear that they don't want the fire department sent unless we can verify the fool of a homeowner wasn't smoking in bed, or we won't let the ER treat the moron who went to clean his gun and forgot it was loaded.

I'd like to think we still live in a place where we grab a hose and put out a fire - not debate who's at fault while the house, and then the neighborhood burns. None of us like to pay for the mistakes of others, but if the flow of foreclosed homes into the unsold inventory isn't stemmed, it will become less and less possible for the folks with good credit and 20% or more down to get a home loan. Why? Because the banks can't gauge how much further the homes will depreciate. Also, it's not just the irresponsible who are getting foreclosed -- hundreds of thousands of Amreicans are filing for unemployment every week.

...and for those of you complaining about King Obama, King Obama has had a month in office. Let's talk about King George, for a moment, shall we? Under the Republican congress Bill Clinton was saddled with, Senator Phil "Americans-are-whiners" Gramm brought forth the bill to repeal Glass-Stegall, and allow a whole lot of deregulation of banking. When housing prices rose at double digit rates in Florida, Arizona, and California, did King George and the Republican Congress step in and say "look, this is irresponsible - we need to slow this down?" Oh no, they did not. This should come as no surprise, given how they allowed the public to be fleeced on no-bid contracts for services in the war on Al Quaida, or how we've spent nearly a hundreds of billions of bucks on a war in Iraq that started over weapons of mass destruction that weren't there, and a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9-11 that didn't exist. While there is blame to be shared on all sides, as far as I'm concerened, King George and his Republican Congress were asleep at the switch for 6 of the last 8 years, and they bear the Lion's Share of the blame. You can laugh, cuss, or call me names all you want, but there's a very good reason that the GOP was taken to the woodshed in the Congress and Senate this past November, and why our President won by a landslide.>>

This morning, I got:

<<To EddieAlbania,
1. the war in Iraq was leagal & morally right even though it was not popular. It is not George Bush's fault the intelligence was not correct. MANY nations world-wide had intell that stated Sadam had WMD's.
2. As for the houseing mess:
It was Bill Clinton who signed the bill into law. Without his signature there is no repeal of the glass-stegall act. btw it was the Clinton administration who "highly encouraged" banks to make home loans to poor credit people. The Clinton administration observed that minorties had a far smaller proportionate % of home ownership than the rest of the nation. So they accused mortguage companies of institutional racism. The banking industry said not racisim, but that minorities were mostly poor or lower credit scores, thus denying home loans. Bill in effect told them to make it easier to get a home loan & the gov through freddie may & freddie mac would cover them. & Evrything snowballed from there.
Obama did not win by landslide. The popular vote was 54-46, and most of those voters did not even know the D's had controll of Congress the past two years when they voted for Obama. Btw it was not Bush's job to walk into every home loan company's office and hold hands and ask the the home buyer if they are buying a home they truly can afford, and asking the mortguage company if they are lending money to a person who is capable of paying the loan back under normal life circumstances. It is not Bush's or the R's fault the housing bubble burst any more than it was Bill C's fault the tech stock bubble burst in March of 2000. Yes, as a society people have been over spending for decades. Constant car leaseing or buying, maxed out credit cards, home equity loans on top of mortguages & then they all want the government to bail them out when it all falls down like a house of cards. I am not denying the role of corporate greed in the housing mess, but without consumers throwing money around like its water, they would not make a penny. No One had a gun held to their head to make a purchase they could not afford.
Also, there is a world of difference between a fire department rushing to save someone's life and someone complaining that responsible people are getting shafted because of irresponsible spending by other people such as this home loan mess.
have a good day.>>

At least he wished me a good day. Other than that, a) I'm not sure how you can argue that any aspect of a war based on manipulated data, and that has resulted in the engagement of torture is moral, b) notwithstanding that the former President couldn't be in every loan office, Treasury certainly could have put the brakes on things like -- oh, I don't know -- no income verification loans.

Before I respond, I'd like to call on the collective wisdom here. I make no claims of oratorial briliance.

Also, should I wish him a nice day, or is there a more patronizing (while still being printable) salutation you can think of? Or should I go classic with "God Bless the United States of America"?

[abluelady]

1. What Stuck Out to Me

was the error of Bill Clinton and spending. The reality is Ronald Reagan started this obsessive spending in America. I'm sure you can find some text from his speeches about how we should spend and we should all strive for the American dream. Of course, he never talked about how to pay for it.

There as been a tremendous lack of oversight and monitoring which caused so many of our problems. Aren't the right wingers against oversight? I think the best argument is that their way has failed. PERIOD. These people don't really want to think outside their box. They have decided why all problems are what they are and nothing will change their mind. As I said, just remind them we've done things their way for a very long time and it didn't work. There is no point in what you consider a valid conversation. They don't really want a conversation. They are only interested in the blame game, which they had no part in.:sarcasm:

[Wapsie B]

2. I assume he voted for McCain/Palin.

Just ask him Sarah Palin? Are you serious? Then laugh.


Really there's nothing to be gained arguing with someone like that. They've got to wake up themselves someday if ever.

[bunkerbuster1]

3. Step one: Stop arguing with idiots.

Step two: know their sources, if you must. The silly crack about how "most of those voters did not even know the D's had control of Congress the past two years when they voted for Obama" comes from a kicked-to-the-curb poll that offered no similar "IQ test" for McCain voters.

Root around in here if you're not familiar with that stupid poll that EVERY SINGLE FREEPER REFERENCES:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/final-words-for-now-on-zieglergate.html

[OmahaBlueDog]

8. Thanks. I figured he'd gotten that TP from Rush

I hav to say something about arguing with idiots -- especially in these kind of "response-to-the-article" venues. I really feel that these arenas are overrun with responders taking their cues from RW talk radio. I think it's important to get the other POV out there -- if nothing else just to let a reader know that not everyone agrees with Republican talking points.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. A) mortgage standards didn't decline because of government edict.

Mortgages were awarded to people who couldn't pay, on homes that were overpriced because banks bought insurance in the form of derivatives. In reality, it didn't indemnify anyone from a drop in home values, it exposed everyone to systemic risk.

b) A hypothetical veto of the glass-steagall repeal would have been pointless - the veto would have been overridden.

c) "It wasn't Bush's job to walk into every home loan company to hold hands with the buyer", but Clinton is to blame for telling bankers to give indiscrimate mortgages? Does that pretty well sum up the letter-writer's world view?

d) the proposal is nothing more than allowing people to refinance, they still need to make their payments. It's an infinitely better outcome than allowing the home to foreclose then shifting the bank losses onto the taxpayers.

[treestar]

5. If we have been overspending as a society, why can we not right

that as a society?

I bet the Clinton made them give bad loans stuff is merely false. Snopes or factcheck.org

And Clinton wasn't in office when we were told to "go shopping" after 911.

[gratuitous]

6. Too much stupid to respond to

Yeah, other nations thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but that was mostly based on the cherry-picked intelligence the Bush administration was stuffing down everyone's throats. Ask Scott Ritter, who was actually in Iraq in the time before Bush made his mad empire gambit, what the consequences were for anyone gainsaying the official Bush administration line.

And who launches not one, but two invasions of other countries half a world away, and then cuts taxes for the people most able to pay for it? Check the record federal deficits run up by the Bush administration between 2002 and 2009, and tell me that doesn't have something to do with the credit crunch. One guy in Omaha defaulting on his mortgage hardly holds a candle to this wanton pillaging of the federal treasury.

[JHB]

7. Look up changes in capitalization requirements...

...and obstruction of states taking action against predatory lending.

I don't have the details handy, but those were definitely Bush actions and both gave more latitude for the swindlersbankers to go so far out on a limb that we're faced with a collapse of the whole system.

[theoldman]

9. In my area, North Texas, the low income home owners are

paying off their mortgages. It's the upper middle class and rich people who are defaulting. The major difference is that low income people were buying a house to live in while the richer people were buying an investment in hopes of making a lot of money.

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. I went to visit a friend in Florida who lives in an exclusive, gated community

We took a tour of the foreclosures and properties that had gone at tax auction.

He showed me one property that had gone originally for 1.5M that had just sold on the courthouse stps for $595K.

He showed me a series of homes. A man from India bought a house, then borrowed against the equity to buy another, and so on until he had 5 homes and half a million dollars in cash in his pocket. He fled to India, leaving the mortgage lenders on the hook. In one case, a home initially valued in the 7 figures sits - literally - rotting because it has never been occupied and the a/c has never been run to keep out the opressive humidity.

He showed me homes listed in PFC. These were owners who'd simply bitten off more than they could chew.

He also told me of a conversation with a Miami builder. Newly built condos, never occupied, and in which the a/c was never run are now undergoing mold remediation -- even though the units have never been occupied.

Horrible greed leading to horrible waste.

[Contrary1]

11. Here's a rough idea of how much $800 Billion is:

About $800 billion of US taxpayers' funds spent or approved for spending in Iraq through mid-2009.

**SINCE MARCH 20, 2003** That's money spent in 6 years, or in terms the Freep might understand: 2003 years after the days of Jesus. So, in 2,190 DAYS, we have spent the same amount in Iraq on a "leagal & morally right" war.

I wonder how his God would prefer that kind of money be spent?

Let the Einstein spend the rest of the day figuring out the math on that one.

Morans.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm