I wonder why in the “personal responsibility” column, no ever talks about the personal responsibility of the aggressive loan agents and banks who pushed impossible mortgages onto poor, uneducated working class people.
Or the responsibility of financial institutions and billionaire hedge fund managers who then circulated trillions of $ of worthless mortgage-backed securities and unregulated credit default swaps.
Sometimes I get the feeling the “personal responsibility” has become little more than a euphemism for “dog eat dog”.
I hate to show my naivite, but I see so many more examples of people taking responsibility and not suing people than in your examples. The problem is that the bad eggs are so bad they overshadow the good.
I see people donate hundreds of hours of their personal time to meals on wheels, Habitat for Humanity, and even animal welfare groups. Those people aren’t suing others, they are just doing what they believe is right. And those people so much outweigh the bad eggs. But since that’s what people do every day it is not interesting. Some lard-ass suing McDonalds is rare enough that it makes news.
Color me optimistic. It is an optimistic time.
For the right-wingers, the optimism and “hope” is not just a random word. It comes from the realization that while the next administration will be far from perfect, we are confident that they will make decisions based not just on gut feel, but on rational thought. With a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity. They may not always make the right decisions. We know that, contrary to what the right-wingers might believe.
Good points. The loan agents and hedge fund managers should burn in hell (along with Cheney and Rove, but that’s another story :)).
And I have to say this. For every poor, uneducated person getting a loan, there was someone like my co-workers son, who with a $40,000 a year job, got a mortgage on a house nicer and larger (3000 sq. ft) than his Dad, who makes 3-4X that amount of money. Kid has a college education, and his father advised him not to do it. Poor and uneducated? I think not. Greedy and stupid, perhaps.
when the communist manifesto begins today, in 10 years when people have no personal freedoms left, they will wonder how they heck they got there.
my biggest wish is that the ingoing party is incompetent and nothing will get done. that would be the greatest blessing of all.
Your bitterness is sad and pathetic.
Agreed. But…
a) i dare say the majority of these loans were peddled to the poor and uneducated.
b) this kid’s loan officer utterly failed(most likely on purpose) to do any sort of due diligence on whether the applicant could afford the loan.
Ignoring your dad is usually a bad idea, but when a “professional” is telling you something else, it makes for a tough decision.
Again, the “personal responsibility” thing runs both ways and the loan officer in that case failed to take any.
Like you I am optimistic because today, we are having a peaceful revolution. As a right winger, I think it to be celebrated. In fact, my wife and I and our two kids are going to watch the festivities in a few minutes. My hope and prayer is that Obama will lead our nation well.
But why can’t you leave your response there - you say “make decisions based not just on gut feel” - WTF does that mean? Its “thoughts” like this that make me feel not so optimistic. To even suggust that we are where we are as a country based on one man - Bush and his “gut” decisions is insane. All our politicians have kicked the can down the road - we have $56 Trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities coming…my judgement on Obama will be what will he do on these issues that make up these liabilities, mainly SS and Medicare reform. He is on the clock in 11 minutes.
But today, I will have hope and pray that you and your ilk will be leaders that will make rational decisions based on macro benefits to our country.
**when the communist manifesto begins today, in 10 years when people have no personal freedoms left, they will wonder how they heck they got there. **
People really shouldn’t wonder, they can simply look back on the Bush administration. They started the wiretapping and monitoring of calls to “protect” America, they started the bailouts to companies too big to fail and they started the idea of personal freedoms taking a backseat to keeping America safe.
How you can say this will start with Obama is really a stretch.
I think this new administration may continue the trend but you have to be honest as to when and where it started.
Wow, what flavor Kool Aid did you drink? All they served us liberals / Obama voters in Idaho was grape. You must have gotten the high powered cherry flavor they mixed up in the big cities:) Just kidding.
Don’t get me wrong. I am hoping and praying that Obama actually tackles some of the ills that plague this country. Maybe that is my HOPE today for the Obama administration. (I saw the neon sign flashing “CORPORATE GREED” above GWB’s head 9 years ago, so I knew it was gonna get ugly at some point). But it starts with us, and I see taking responsibility (and not expecting the gov. to bail us out if we screw up) as paramount.
Anyhow, I am going out for lunch today to celebrate the end of King George’s tyranny today. And toast to the new hope.
To actually view people voting in hopes for more handouts to be taking responsiblity for their own path in life is just… I don’t know if its sad or funny, but it sure isn’t smart.
Who said anything about handouts? Maybe they were tired of getting screwed in the rear by the Neocon agenda and endless lies and insane financial fraud for 8 years…
I hesitate to even post into the political threads anymore but…
Has anyone actually read the speeches Obama has been giving, consistantly? Every one he talks about personal responsibility. To demonstrate, I did a search on Google for:
Obama speech personal responsibility
It is quite a long list. I know the sceptics on here will dismiss them as just talk but he does make is part of almost every single speech he gives.
“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply”
Pretty words. It just brings up the question of what is personal responsibility? For real what is it? Is it doing thing on your own and not needing help? Is it being responsible enough to pay all your taxes?
Goes both ways. I’m pointing out that he clearly has talked about it. There is an implication that he doesn’t even acknowledge this, I’m merely pointing out that he talks about it.
The freedom to not be tortured and imprisoned and wire-tapped without due process… just for starters. The freedom to get on a plane without being body-searched. The freedom to not have to pay for frivolous Neocon wars. The freedom to not be hated for it by most of the people in the world.
“People did take responsibility. By turning out and voting for the candidate they felt best represented their interests. They took responsibility and said ‘enough.’ They said we’d like to join the rest of the world by implementing a sane health care system…”
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. If I simply vote to have “society” take responsibility for my health care and other aspects of my existence, I have thereby exercised all the important areas of my responsibility? Gosh, this responsibility thing is a lot easier than I thought.
“…take absolute power away from unregulated laissez faire robber barons.”
Now there I think you may have a valid point. As I’ve noted in several recent posts, in today’s times the term laissez faire (from the French for “let do”) most aptly describes our statist system, in which we let government officials do as they will, unregulated by any Constitution or any considerations of limited government, and the rest of us are only permitted what the government explicitly gives us license to do. Therefore the term “unregulated laissez faire robber barons” obviously must refer to the IRS and other Federal officials, and I strongly agree with you that we should do whatever we can to take absolute power away from them.
"that’s right. people don’t want to take responsibility, they want the government to do it all for them. but they also want to have freedom. the news is that it doesn’t work that way–we cannot have the government do everything and also maintain personal freedoms.
when the communist manifesto begins today, in 10 years when people have no personal freedoms left, they will wonder how they heck they got there."
Kittycat, I think your first paragraph is exactly right. OTOH, if your second paragraph was intended to imply that our freedoms or the ethic of personal responsibility were preserved by the Bush administration, you are sadly mistaken. The erosion in these areas merely continued under Bush, and I’m not personally convinced that Obama’s record in these areas is likely to be any worse than McCain’s would have been.
