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Participant“PD, my sense is that we’ll muster the will to fight.”
Sure, you’ve got the will to fight. But you don’t have a reason to fight. And that’s the problem. Your government has tricked you into wanting to fight their fight rather than yours. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) is whose fight we’re fighting.
“All the will and fortitude seems to be dying with my Grandfather’s generation. We have become a nation of lazy quitters and complainers who expect instant gratification and stunning success.”
This is typical of the right wing’s other main tactic. When logic and reason fail (which they obviously have in this case), resort to emotional rhetoric and lobbing made-up insults at the other side.
If anything, our country is doomed to become fascist. When people stop questioning their government, that’s the first step toward fascism. If ever a government deserved to be questioned, it’s ours right now. I always wondered what kind of idiots cheered mussolini and stalin in the streets. Now I know. They’re not idiots. PD and jg aren’t stupid. That’s pretty obvious. They’ve merely fallen for emotional rhetoric and placed too much faith in their leaders. And it seems to me that maybe that’s what happened to all those people who followed stalin and mussolini.
I understand that it’s human nature to want to feel good about yourself. And that’s Karl Rove’s genius. He’s made people stick with his side because it makes them feel good about themselves to say,”we’re strong and you’re weaklings. We’re right and you’re “liberals.” We’re willing to stay and fight and be manly and you want to cut and run, you little girls. We’re righteous and moral and you’re degenerate and heathen. We’re just better than you are!” The problem is that none of it is true. Just because you want to engage in war doesn’t make you strong. If you are willing to fight to defend your country, that does make you strong. But if you are willing to fight simply because gwbush says you should, that makes you weak. And basing your morals on a fantasy being doesn’t make you righteous. Having morals and ethics based on what’s good for the human condition doesn’t make you degenerate. It’s what you do and not where you get your guidance that makes you good or bad. And people who get their guidance from god are, in my experience, no more likely to be “good” than those who don’t. In fact, in many cases, it gives them license to do bad things.
Actually, if there’s one man to blame in this whole fiasco, it’s Karl Rove. A more brilliant person at what he does I cannot think of. He’s managed to get people to elect a complete idiot to run their country, and to support the conservatives long after they’ve displayed their incompetence. It really is absolutely amazing. But he knew, while the democrats didn’t, that what people respond to is emotional rhetoric and propaganda. Not logic and reason. Even in the information age, people don’t want too much information. They just want to feel good. Unfortunately, while Rove knows how to make people feel good about themselves and to get his people elected, he doesn’t know how to run a country, and neither does the fool that he got elected.
ParticipantThe fall of our society is coming. The cause is that we are fighting the wrong fights.
If all the effort we’re focusing on Iraq had been focused on Al Qaeda (our true enemy) to start with, you wouldn’t hear people not wanting to continue to fight.
Participantjg,
If the 9/11 commission couldn’t find evidence of links between al quaeda and Iraq, chances are there weren’t any. If that dick Cheney can’t provide any evidence except saying it over and over again, there probably isn’t any evidence. In fact, the only reason so many people believe it’s true is that Cheney repeated it so often. The fact is that Bush and Cheney lied to us. And thousands died as a result. I don’t understand why that doesn’t make you angry or at least sad. It makes me a lot of both. I really don’t understand how someone can support our troops and our president. He’s getting them killed.
Yes, some senators backed the resolution allowing bush to attack Iraq. They, also, were mislead about intelligence regarding WMD.
You talk about history taking a while to judge presidents. I would bet all my money that in 30 years, GWB will be ranked by historians in the bottom 5. If I had to guess, I’d say he’ll be last.
I’m not a monday morning qb. I said (and blogged) before the war that going into iraq, a war of choice, would accomplish nothing except to turn moderate muslims into radical ones. And I was right then. And I’m right now. And I’ll be right in 30 years.
And if all you can come up with is “al qaeda had ties to iraq” and “some democrats believed there were wmds,” then I think that deep down inside you know I’m right.
Bush invaded iraq because that’s what he and the neocons have wanted to do for a decade. 9/11 was just an excuse. History will make that clear even to those who refuse to see it now.
Stand up and do what’s right for your country. Vote the people who have destroyed our country and killed our countrymen out of office. To do anything else would be very unpatriotic.
Participant“What you fail to understand is that the purpose of soldiers, is not to do a job and get the GI Bill… All that’s changed, is you are now here to support the mission against radical muslims instead of commies.”
What makes you think I fail to understand what the job of a soldier is? Where did I say there job was anything other than to defeat the enemy and protect our country? My point wasn’t that their deaths are a problem because they now can’t perform their duties. My point was that their deaths are a problem because now they’re dead, and for no reason.
Which brings me back to my question, the one nobody seems to be able to answer: Why?
(And by the way, the reason I generally won’t bring up Limbaugh or Hannity is that I wouldn’t assume that anyone listens to them anymore than I’d assume anyone has an IQ of 80. Which is about the IQ it would take to listen to them and not see them for the ridiculous, mindless buffoons that they are. Of course, if somebody admits to me that they admire one of those clowns, that’s a different story. But nobody ever admits that. Sometimes I’ll listen to them for as long as I can stomach just to see what they’re saying. And it’s always the same: whiny mocking of “liberals,” downplaying the bush administration’s incompetence, blaming the results of the bush administration’s incompetence on somebody else, and mindlessly promoting the republican platform (god forbid they should have an original idea that doesn’t conform to the conservative agenda). And callers who’s motto is “dittos.” As in, I can just ditto what you say, Rush, because I can’t think for myself. That may be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. Who would be proud of saying “dittos?” And Hannity and Limbaugh’s partisanship is extreme to the point of ridiculousness. Can you even imagine if a democrat were president and congress were democratic and they were doing the exact same thing that bush/congress are doing? The exact same thing. Every action, every speech, every vote? These clowns would be livid. Their reaction would be exactly the opposite of what it is now. Because they can’t think for themselves. All they know is, everything the conservatives do is right, and everything the liberals do is wrong. And they’ll use some tortured logic and some crazy spin to try and make it sound that way. Unfortunately, huge numbers of people in this country can’t seem to see through the flaws in their logic and the spin on their curveballs. Anyway, I just wasted 10 minutes of my life typing about 2 wastes of time and energy. I regret that.)
ParticipantAnd while we’re on the subject of Iraq, I’d like to ask all the supporters of the war:
What have we gotten/will we get from the war in Iraq?
Why have thousands of our finest people died? Why have tens of thousands been maimed? Less importantly, but still important, why have we spent hundreds of billions (trillions if you don’t just count the actual operating costs of the war that congress has approved, but also count the long-term care of injured soldiers, the lost production from them, and all other ancilliary costs of war)?
For what purpose?
ParticipantBush served in the ANG. That’s your answer to “Kerry served in combat and Bush didn’t?”
He used his father’s pull to get him an assignment that would greatly reduce his chances of ending up in combat. Let others without connections put their lives on the line. Very impressive.
“Bush did his duty. ‘Big Bill’ did not.”
It’s highly debatable that Bush did his duty. Using connections to avoid combat isn’t my idea of doing one’s duty. It is true that Clinton didn’t do his duty. But what does any of this have to do with Clinton?
Participant“After all, the study subjects were from Massachusetts, home of ‘Cut and run Kerry.’
Hey, maybe that explains why he voted for the war before he voted against it; big reduction in hormone levels between votes!”
Ha ha. good joke. What takes more testosterone, fighting in combat (Kerry) or sending men to their deaths for no good reason from the comfort of your office(Bush)?
Participant“We haven’t won in Iraq because our policy has been “niced up” in an attempt to appease people like PerryChase and the liberal press.”
PD, certainly you must be a more intelligent person than that quote indicates.
1). Our policy is set by congress and the Bush administration. You know as well as I do that neither the republicans who control congress nor the bush administration give the tiniest bit of a damn about the liberal press nor about people like PerryChase.
2). And even if congress did “nice up” our policies too much for your taste, it’s their fault, not the liberal press’ or PerryChase’s.
3). We’re losing the war in Iraq because the bush administration, and rumsfeld in particular, have displayed phenomenal incompetence in waging the war. They should have know better what to expect (W could’ve asked his father. His father knew, and he wrote about the very thing that’s actually happening right now long before W invaded Iraq), they should have been better prepared for that, and they should’ve abandoned rumsfelds failed policies years ago. The only reason you don’t see where the fault lies is that you refuse to.
Your quote is a perfect example of the republican mantra of “blame everything on everybody except us.” Only now that they’ve screwed the entire country (1. let thousands of Americans die and blown trillions of dollars on a war that got us… I don’t know what, you tell me 2.spent wild amounts of money domestically, much of it on pork, much more than any democratic administration ever has 3. borrowed trillions that our children will have to pay back), only now are some republican voters starting to say, maybe we should be doing things a bit differently. But the politicians are mostly still sticking to their “it’s not our fault” guns.
I don’t know, maybe it’s human nature to want to blame somebody else. It’s too bad we can’t expect more from our elected leaders.
ParticipantGreat graph, jg.
That may be the ugliest sign for the future I’ve seen yet.
The change in source in ’04 slightly distorts the situation, but even using the same source, it’s quite scary. Here’s an article that contains a graph using dataquick data for the whole time frame. The ’96 peak, using dataquick data, is about 3900 vs. about 3300 using the other info.
(As a side note, I find it strange that in that article NPR, which usually gives us relatively intelligent reporting, would quote this Burns character on when the market will bottom. He’s trying to get a bunch of people to pay for his course to learn how to profit now from the downturn by buying houses. If his potential customers think the bottom is 5 years away, his business suffers. Maybe NPR figures its readers can figure this out for themselves.)
Anyway, the sudden and steep rise in NODs is, to me, probably the scariest thing I’ve seen yet regarding the future of San Diego real estate. I didn’t expect it to rise that quickly until all the 5-year resets for homes bought in spring ’04 and after.
I’m curious why it’s going up so fast already. And I wonder if it can continue upward at this pace for very long. And I wonder what’ll happen in ’09-’11 when all the 5-year ARMs taken out in ’04-’06 reset.
I’d be interested to hear some opinions on that.
Participant“I posted that data numbers are objective.”
I didn’t see any data at all. Could you show me where you posted any data numbers?
“Why? The information is readily available…”
Please explain why you think this will prevent large price drops.
ParticipantI, too, welcome contrarian points of view. Especially ones with a decent argument behind them. The view expressed above is “don’t hold your breath.” Which I take to mean, “prices won’t fall that much.” But the only supporting evidence that I see behind this particular view (and of course could be missing something, correct me if I am) is that “There are people that won’t put their living situation on hold and wish to move into something different or need to make an adjustment to their mortgage. It happens everyday and it’s a factor that will never change.” While that is all true, it has very little bearing on what’s coming next. The same thing has been true during every real estate bust in history. Yet there have been busts. Big ones.
If you have other reasons why you think prices won’t fall much, I’d be interested to hear them.
ParticipantI concur with the duuuuude on access to Clairemont.
UTC, if I’m not mistaken, gets a fair amount of noise from Miramar Jet departures. Anybody ever live there that can tell us about that?
sdrealtor: Those were exactly the two “motivated sellers” to which I was referring. They both probably got more than 900k, the 3700sf one probably significantly more. The one with the 6k+ sf lot has lots of unuseable slope in that square footage. So maybe we’re splitting hairs there, but the important thing is that, yes, you can get somewhat more there now than you could a month or two ago.
Sounds like you know CV pretty well. I have a question for you. A large percentage of buyers in CV are Chinese. The Chinese love the number 8 (their word for 8 sounds like their word for prosperity) and hate the number 4 (sounds like “death” in Chinese). The street number of the 3700 sf house is 4414. Do you think this might’ve reduced the number of potential buyers for that house?
I’ve noticed that at all the new home releases, there are huge numbers of Chinese (in fact, at one release, I was the only white person there out of 47, most or all of them being Chinese, Indian or Middle Eastern), but I don’t know about the resale market (maybe they prefer new homes). Any insight on that?
Participant“This month in carmel valley you can get a well upgraded 3000+ sq ft home on a 6000 to 7000 sq ft lot for 900K.”
I believe that’s a tad hyperbolic, but there are a couple examples of motivated sellers getting only a bit more than 900k for homes that almost fit the above description. Of course, motivated sellers seem to be the only ones closing deals these days. And in another few months the above may be the norm. Heck, in a couple years, you might need a 4500sf mansion with a pool to fetch 900k.
ParticipantIf you like Sunset Cliffs, then you probably wouldn’t like a bland suburb. But if you wouldn’t rule it out, consider this:
Carmel Valley (which is as bland and suburban as it gets) does have great schools and, despite being relatively expensive, has a very large number of young families. It is also very mild in the summer, with highs usually in the low to mid 70s. It is very close to the I-5, and commute times to downtown wouldn’t be too bad. It is also a very safe, family-oriented place to live. For 900k you can get a 2600sf house on a 4000-5000 sf lot.
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