Musings of a Free Man, the way things look to me

Chuck · Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 11 Location: Way up the Holler

We have this big housing boom

Labor is cheap, after all, it's illegal immigrants.
They build more houses than they have customers for.
So they have to use creative financing to sell them
AMTs, etc. just to sell the houses built by labor too cheap to be legal
So they approve mortgages to people who don't have the financial savvy to know what they've signed up for.

Now, suddenly and unexpectedly (/sarcasm) people ain't making their payments and defaulting on their loans
Anybody seriously not see this coming?

So,,,, what does Washington do?
What does the party of personnal responsibility and freedom propose?
A bailout

Bailout the banks who can't stand by the decisions they made to grant these loans
Bailout the builders who never would have built so many damn houses if they had to use legal labor
Bailout the poor little illegals who won't have jobs to steal and may have to go back to Mexico.
And bailout the stupid little people who got in over their heads

Keep the price of lumber high
Over $50 just to build a doghouse, for crying out loud

Let the repo-ed houses sit
Let the banks go under
Throw out the illegals and start paying honest wages again for skilled trades.
Let the price of lumber come down and let the housing industry slow down.

It's called correction
The stock market does it

But this crisis couldn't have happened without illegals stealing honest jobs

Somebody ought to do something

Kizzume · Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:48 pm Post subject:

Lumber isn't going to drop in price unless we were able to clear cut a whole bunch more land, which would suck. We're needing more lumber than we have growing, so the price is going to be high.

We should be lowering the prices of the alternative building materials--especially those materials that are made of recycled material.

If we let the banks go under--well, let's just say that the affect on the market all the way around would be truly awful.

The only thing I agree with your assessment is that we need to do something about illegal workers.

To me this also shows that we really need to put classes on doing finances into the public education system.

The issue I'm mixed on--I don't have enough info on either side to really be able to make an assessment--is the issue of whether we should help the people who made stupid decisions or not in their finances. What I do know is this:

If we don't help them, the government will be accused of not caring about poor people. If we do help, the government will be accused of being taken over by communists. The government is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Chuck · Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 11 Location: Way up the Holler

Who gives a crap what the government is accused of?

Sink or swim baby, those people bought a $250,000 house when they should have bought a $100,000 one.
Wanna see a REAL problem.
Let the government tell America you can't be foreclosed on.

And FYI, Lumber went up when we started staging for Iraq.
Besides the war, the only demand came from these houses being built with illegal labor. If the labor wasn't so cheap (illegally) the demand would have dropped, and so would the price of my doghouses

But as far as the home financing goes, I'm all in favor of creative financing
But if your ego writes checks your body can't cash,,,,,,,,,,

Chuck · Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 11 Location: Way up the Holler

I'm rethinking my position on this whole torture thing.

Just plain old anger makes me want to skin alive anybody trying to attack this country, and I pray God forgives if I'm ever in a situation of having control over someone harming those I love.

But,,,,,
Someone posted the Geneva Convention qualifications for POWs and I was playing devil's advocate with a loudmouthed con and I realized that Bush gave them legal status by recognizing them in the first place.

In the second place, they are often referred to as "captured on the battlefield". Sounds like they are a "party" to the dispute to me.

So, IMHO, they qualify for Geneva Concention protection.

Now that doesn't mean I agree with all of the Geneva Conventions, and I maintain the position that free men have a duty to NOT obey unrighteous laws.
But, all in all, they do qualify.

Does torture work?
Awful big question for three little words. If people will say anything to get the torture to stop, why wouldn't they give up the truth to make it stop?
If they knew it?
It's pretty common knowledge that cops have beat info out of people in the back of the station house before.

They way I see it, it only doesn't work if the person being tortured doesn't have the info being sought.
If they do have it, they will give it up.

Therefore, I'd say it's up to the handlers to make sure they are torturing the right person, the person who has what they want.
Totally different question from the status as POWs

So, they can't be tortured anyway.

Next, is waterboarding, or what is torture?

I was arrested one time in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Never mind why.

They stripped me and gave me an orange jump suit with the zipper ripped out from my navel to my right knee, handcuffed my hands behind me, and marched me about a block down the sidewalk to the city square, up the front courthouse steps, and had me wait standing in the lobby, justa hanging in the breeze. The women clerks were buzzing around, doing their jobs, checking me out. By the time they got me uncuffed and in the courtroom, all I wanted was to do whatever it took to get the hell out of there, and town.

Was that some form of torture?
I just figured it was part of the risk I ran doing what I did.

But waterboarding
No pain, just 30 or 40 seconds of horrifying fear?
No scars.
I've seen some videos of various volunteers being waterboarded
They all said they'd give up their mothers to not do that again.

Is using fear torture?
How about shame?

I'm still evolving on this. I'll figure it out