I know I know

You’re preprogrammed to defend Republicans and hate Democrats.

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not the case at all. chances are the banking lobby would have succeeded under a bush administration in repealing much/all of glass-steagall.

the fact of the matter is that clinton signed that into law, not bush. falls on clinton, if a teacher/professor/academic wants to pile that onto w bush - that's being pre-programmed.

You’re right

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Yep. Clinton helped to create the policy but it was Bush that abused it.

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I would agree post 9/11 has been damaging obviously I'm not for the Patriot Act. The response to Covid alone is far worse and will damage this country forever...businesses, schools, kids, medical field, health, trust it's all gone. Throw in the fabulous plan for climate change and I think we are really fucked. We at least had a country, I don't know that we have that anymore. I don't think the future is good either. I think it will be much worse than 2008 and I don't know that they can stop it if they wanted to which they don't. It's possible there will be a housing crisis as bad, along with food crisis, energy crisis, and financial/stock market crisis. They might trot out another health crisis too. You might think you have enough money and your social credit will be good enough but I can't see you living like that as the norm and if you do is that really the life you want to be living?

clinton didn't help it, he signed the act. he's the one who made it possible for banks to collect interest on many more mortgages/own the property if borrower failed. now goldman can create a market of risky mortgages - just like they did with various nations' debt. cds. that's exactly what the banks (investment and commercial) wanted and they got what they wanted from clinton.

they way the banks 'sold' this to a ho-hum public was that all americans; regardless of financial/credit standing - deserved a chance at the american dream, a home. this is what the think-tanks came up with to explain the repeal of much of glass-steagall. the banks got greedy, lost on this gambit, many of the banks got bailed out for this flirt with unencumbered corporatism.

so, bush abused it how? bush himself comingled peoples' savings money and lent those funds out for risky commercial purposes?

I can't remember what book it was in but there was a quote that was something like "For some reason people like to hear the world is going to end." You could pick any newspaper in any city during any time over the last 250 years of the USA and you're likely to find something similar to the above. The world, economy, country, city, etc. is going to shit. Look things aren't linear, nobody is saying that, but history proves out that the trajectory of humanity has consistently improved. This is true, essentially, for everyone everywhere. Sure, I'd rather live in the United States today than Saudi Arabia, but I'd rather live in Saudi Arabia in 2022 than 1900.

But that delicious pessimism is irresistible. We are all prone to give into the narrative of negativity, but statistically zero percent of catastrophic predictions throughout the course of history have proven to be true, if for no other reason than pessimism gets way more ink, than optimism or stoicism.

No we're all fucked for real this time.

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For hundreds of years people have been saying "but this time it's different!"

Not only that but merely questioning the president while we were in war was deemed unpatriotic.

You wouldn't think it would be possible, but MANY forget how big of a financial crisis the world and country faced in 2008. As you correctly pointed out, that was our depression.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

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Hawaii (fuck) You

These lists almost always come down to recency bias and "your" politics. Very rarely is there any objectivity.

You had a president who lost 3 million jobs in 4 years, shut down the country/economy, helped create a couple of hated vaccines, encouraged people to take "his" vaccines, sank the stock market in a month, had unprecedented annual budget deficits, printed enough money to cause our current inflation, had record crime numbers, incentivized quitting/not working with the unprecedented unemployment pay, failed to do anything about our infrastructure, was afraid to leave Afghanistan, and cut police funding. Still, he's seen as a top 2 president in the lifetime of many. A significant portion of the country believes that he was better than George Washington.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

that was pretty fantastic right there

Yeah I was hoping he would go on for more.

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Elections have consequences.

You don't think the country and it's government has changed (drastically) that could bring it's destruction about? They tried to roll out a Disinformation Governance Board. Disinformation was facts that didn't fit an almost completely crazy agenda. Forget it's unconscionable due to the first amendment but even worse the same people are telling me that a person with a penis is totally a woman and can't really define what one is. Our government tried to force an unnecessary and ineffective (seemingly continuous) medical procedure on the entire population thru threats of losing your livelihood and social pressure. I've never once thought food would not be available and it looks as if it might be a real possibility as it has been for baby formula. What do you think this transition off fossil fuels is going to look like? And what does a world with a weak US look like? They've kicked the can down the road with debt and whatnot but we've always known that bill will come due.

There have been catastrophes all over the world for centuries. We haven't existed for that long and we've mostly been insulated from them. I'd prefer not to live thru a reign of terror or famine. I liked the comfortable life most of us led and to have the hope that things will be better. I don't get that feeling right now.

We're a few months away from The Road becoming a reality. Stock up on cans of Coke rn.

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No.

Bitcoin will be fine. I would advise buying some now if you don't have any. It should be 1% of your net holdings.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Volcano or Nuclear bomb?

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Bush abused it by leveraging banks to give loans to just about anyone that applied for them. That policy exploded under him and so did the issuing of "exotic loans". It was the Bush Administration that strongly encouraged lenders to go the Mortgage Backed Security route with respect to bundling and issuing loans. They didn't care that there were so many "toxic" loans out there because they believed that they would be able to repackage them regardless. They were in essence running a Ponzi scheme only this time it was the mortgage industry which helped to compose the "pyramid". That wasn't on Bill Clinton. That was all on GW.

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I consider Bush II and Biden similar in terms of their deferring their power to underlings with destructive philosophies. Their sins of omission are at least, if not more damaging than other administration's sins of commission.

I'm almost to the point of being a Bernie guy but I think Bernie always looks good midway through another president's term.

I don't know where the dems will turn for a candidate. They will get slaughtered if Biden or any of the underlings from this administration is the candidate.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The result of James Earl Carter was 28 straight yrs of republicans. There were 2 years in there which Clinton tried to be a dem and it failed horribly. So he threw his wife overboard and did the right thing.

Below 30K, see you in the bread lines comrades.

It's why inflation is such a cancer. Double whammy of value of your assets going down and the price of goods going up. It's vomiting and diarrhea at the same time.

All presidents delegate. My reading of your political posts over the past few years tells me that you are more likely to wear a MAGA hat or vote for DeSantis than you are to support Bernie or any uncompromising "progressive". Besides, unlike your college draft predictions, your political predictions have sucked. Counting out Biden isn't smart.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Biden's #1 priority is inflation and his policies are inflationary. He's counted out and knocked out. Put a fork in him.

If that's solely it, he didn't stand a chance before taking office. When the Trump administration was running up the annual deficit, printing money in unprecedented ways, and shutting down the economy, MANY knew inflation was coming, and there wasn't anything you could do about it that wasn't going to harm the economy. If I recall correctly, you weren't opposed to the inflation that you saw coming.

I wouldn't count out Scranton Joe. MANY have been proven wrong by doing so.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Father time or Article 24 will know out Scranton Joe.

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Elections have consequences.

At his inaugural address Biden should have said he was a one term president. It would have freed him up to completely ignore the extreme spectrum of his party and just relentlessly cut deals with moderate/pragmatic Republicans.

Some president is going to do it at some point, I just thought it might have been Biden.