kimmy

You've repeated this many, many times, and I've corrected you many many times. It's just as wrong as it always has been. It's still wrong. And each time I correct you, you vanish from the thread. The housing bubble was caused by private lenders, who issued the vast majority of subprime mortgages. Private-label subprime mortgages also failed at a much higher rate than subprime mortgages. The vast majority of subprime mortgages weren't mandated by ANY government policy. They were issued because private companies WANTED to. They short-cut their own "due diligence" processes because they needed more mortgages to bundle into Mortgage Backed Securities that they could sell to suckers. You've been told all this many times, and you always put your fingers in your ears and say "la-la-la can't hear you" and vanish. -k

Wondering why a movie about the 2008 financial collapse would portray the Wall Street guys as bad-guys is kind of like wondering why a movie about World War 2 would portray the Germans as bad-guys. They come across as the bad-guys because they were the bad-guys, and there's not much you can do to spin them as anything else. A significant point that you may have missed is that this movie is based on a non-fiction book by veteran financial journalist Michael Lewis. The characters in the movie are actual figures in the finance industry, not "Hollywood stereotypes". The book was on the short-list for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book Of The Year award, so you might want to resist your initial impulse to dismiss it as you generally do with material that doesn't agree with your ideological biases. -k

I don't recall any presidential candidates claiming that oil companies are funding climate change denial. Or mainstream media outlets, for that matter. As for whether it's true or not, that's for another thread. -k

Yes, I do think so. Cruz is willing to go the extra mile to coddle conspiritards. Revisit his response to the Jade Helm kooks in Texas last summer if you don't agree. -k

No. It's Red Army sniper Roza Shanina. -k

I also wish everyone a Merry Christmas! -k

Short version: he doesn't call it a "conspiracy", and he doesn't think it's just golf-courses either. Ted's a smart guy, and he knows what Agenda 21 is, but that's not going to stop him from using it to try and rile up the clueless mooks who believe this stuff. -k

-k

If you're referring to those fake "sting" videos, you're wrong. And that's completely beside the point anyway. -k

yeaaaah, and Robert Lewis Dear was pretty sure that Planned Parenthood wasn't on the up and up either. You guys just like the eco-warrior cause better than the pro-life warrior cause. The rule of law is a pretty big deal for me. -k

Based on what? What reason do you have to believe Enbridge is breaking the law? That's what Robert Lewis Dear decided. -k

Do you guys really want a society where disputes are settled by breaking into private property and disrupting lawfully-conducted business? Or does that only apply to causes you agree with? Will you be as excited when anti-abortion activists do the same? Anti-windpower activists? How about when anti-radiowave activists manage to shut down cell-phone service in your area? -k

"Ike Softner"? Riiiiiiight. I wonder if he has a friend named "Gnarles Manthony"? Anybody want to start a pool on how long it takes our crack moderators to figure out they're being pranked? Mark me down for 7 months. -k

That isn't an explanation as to why all of the new growth is only benefiting the top earners and everybody else's incomes are flat. -k

Ok, so this is progress. You at least agree now that not wanting to live in a place where you'd be subject to harassment isn't xenophobic or racist, and you understand why people would want to move away from places where they (or their wives or their daughters) would be subject to harassment. So when enough people who have the means to leave those areas find someplace else to live, who's left in those areas? -k

I don't recall singing the praises of the new government or the new deficit. It just grates that the generation who had the best of everything thanks to massive borrowing from the public purse is now griping that their taxes are too high while they demand more money be spent to reduce wait-times for hip and knee replacements so that they can get back to Freedom-55ing on the golf courses. -k

I didn't get it until I said it out loud. -k

haha ok... All the stuff I am talking about is in the article you linked to. Did you actually read the article you linked? Did you actually have any intention of talking about the article you linked, or did you just want to talk about things at a "small government GOOD! big government BAD!" type level? -k

A while back we had a thread about this chief, whose financial compensation was revealed under the First Nations Financial Transparency laws. He received a 10% commission on an 8 million dollar land deal with the province involving reserve lands. I can't imagine how anybody thinks that his finances should be a private matter when reserve assets are involved. If a federal or provincial official were to pocket a 10% commission on a transaction involving public assets, the public outrage would be overwhelming. -k

I don't think I need to cite polls to claim that most women don't want to be verbally abused for their hair and their clothes when they go out in public. I know that most women don't want to be harassed by the Modesty Police when they go out in public. You know that too. ... and it's not racist or bigoted or xenophobic to not want to live in a community where you'd be harassed for your hair and your clothes when you go out in public. It's not racist or bigoted or xenophobic to object to the existence of communities where things like that happen. -k

Ok, so you don't blame women for not sharing your desire to enter into confrontations like that, and you understand that you're different from most women in this respect... so surely it follows that you can understand that most women would prefer not to live alongside religious fundamentalists, right? -k

I'm also kind of curious as to how that would actually happen. I mean, like, are we talking "I didn't like it because that new Jedi guy was swarthy, and all the old Jedi were white?" -k

Didn't you just call me a scaredy-cat for saying I wouldn't live in a neighborhood like that? -k