From Huffington Post, regarding Obama’s mortgage modification plan:

In testimony to be delivered Tuesday afternoon, David Lowman, chief executive officer for home lending at the “Too Big To Fail” behemoth, will fight back against the program which calls for lenders and investors to decrease the outstanding debt owed on a home mortgage.

“Like all loans, mortgage contracts are based on a promise to repay money borrowed,” Lowman’s prepared remarks read. “Importantly, there is no provision in the mortgage contract, express or implied, that the lender will restore equity or reduce the repayment amount if the value of the collateral — be it a home, a car or a stock market investment — depreciates.

“If we re-write the mortgage contract retroactively to restore equity to any mortgage borrower because the value of his or her home declined, what responsible lender will take the equity risk of financing mortgages in the future? What responsible regulator would want lenders to take such risk?”

While I’m all about making sure every American has access to affordable healthcare, this is an issue that divides me.

Do we need to help those who’s mortgages are beyond their means due to loss of a job? Sure. But the issue is more then that and delves into the last 30 years of those in the middle class trying to emulate those in the upper class through credit and a sense of entitlement.

I grew up middle class. Folks bought their house from savings, a little luck in the stock market and taking over an existing mortgage. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

My dad worked like a maniac to keep a roof over our heads, even in tough times. What my parents never did was live beyond their means.

When I watch shows like “House Hunters” where couples have NOTHING to put down on a house - and are buying these huge 3,800 square foot monsters with the hope that they will get enough of a raise in the future to continue to afford it, I shake my head. When anyone with questionable credit gets a mortgage with a 15% interest rate that, after five years, increases, I see someone who is not thinking straight.

We live in an optimistic society. People want to believe that their next step will always be a better one, a more lucrative one. This is not always the case.

I bought a house in 2003 with the mindset that if my wife and I both lose our jobs and had to work at MacDonalds, we would still be able to scrape together enough to live there. I could have bought a more expensive house. I was approved for more money. I just remember my parents having those tough months where my dad (a freelancer) wasn’t making as much as the previous and there was worry there. I decided I didn’t want that kind of stress in my life when it came to my home.

And my house if fine for us. Modest. Four bedrooms. A nice yard. Still, as I knew would happen, my taxes increased - from $3,800 to $7,400. And I can still afford it. I factored that in.

So, do I agree with JP Morgan Chase on this issue? I do and I don’t. The last thing we want in this country is another string of foreclosures, so we have to do something. But when I see someone with a mcmansion in a similar neighborhood to mine, someone who 30 years ago wouldn’t even be close to being approved for a mortgage to buy such a house, someone who accepted the floating rate mortgage because, hey, that’s five years away - this steams me. Unlike that person, I actually weighted the negatives - the possibility of losing a job, getting older and not getting paid as much, the continuous rise of my taxes. I was responsible. They were not. Yet, they may get a huge amount of help to stay in their home while I continue to pay more with no help.

This is not a case of jealousy or fairness. My life is far too busy to spend any time but this post to ponder the inequities of the world. It’s about responsibility. A friend of mine once said, “I’ve got no issue with buying a house too expensive for me because it will force me to work harder to keep it.” Very optimistic. Then we hit the end result of the Bush years which, despite the willful blindness of some, was actually pretty predictable.

Current News housing bust, lenders, mortgage rates

From CNN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trailing one potential Republican challenger by 10 points in a hypothetical 2010 matchup, a new poll suggests, and he’s not faring much better against another possible opponent.

Reid trails Nevada GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden, 49 percent to 39 percent, according to a Mason-Dixon poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and released Sunday. Reid is also losing by a 48-43 margin in a hypothetical race against another leading candidate for the Republican Senate nomination, businessman Danny Tarkanian.

Although Reid is likely to raise millions and get a helping hand from national Democrats, Nevadans appear to have an overall negative opinion of their senior senator, who doesn’t have much wiggle room to improve his image. Nearly 100 percent of Nevada voters know who Reid is, and 50 percent of them hold an unfavorable view of the Democrat. Just 38 percent have a favorable opinion.

I am a life-long democrat. I want nothing more than for our agenda to be realized in Obama’s administration. Keeping a majority in the Senate is of utmost importance and Mr. Reid is the Majority leader.

Still in all, I would like nothing more than to see this useless loser ejected from his post, embarrassed in the polls and have difficulty getting a job scooping ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen.

Harry Reid, in my opinion, is the main reason we’re having difficulty getting anything passed or, for that matter, winning the arguments we should be winning. He is the weakest Majority Leader we’ve ever had, and my memory goes way back.

He’s sabotaged every proposal, made hollow threats (when he had the vote majority!) and caved in again and again to the Bush administration. Now, with a Democratic President, he’s continued to obstruct.

Fuck this asshole. I would rather lose a seat in the senate than give him anymore chance to screw us over after 2010. If Obama’s Presidency is deemed a failure, it will be on his head.

Sure, I know. The Senate is a tough place to get bills passed. There’s alot of politics you don’t find in Congress, but the question is, at what point, do you expect SOMETHING from those in leadership positions. Bill Frist did a heck of a lot more during his term than this milktoast weakling has done.

It’s tough love, but we democrats have to know when to strong arm. Getting him out is key. Keeping him is suicide for the party. What we need is someone like Alan Grayson to take his spot. Sad that he’s in the wrong house for that.

Democrats have to learn how to be bullies. It’s the only way to fight an opposing party that’s nothing but.

Current News bill frist, harry reid, relection

Here is a letter on HP from a European gentleman that, I believe, frames the Obama Presidency and the hope of this country well:

Mr. Obama has already earned the prize in my books here in Europe. I am not sure about how you sensed the fear we had here in Europe under the previous generation. Not so much about Bush and Rummy and Cheney but about our own country’s. We saw, under Bush’s administration the rise of Neo-nazism, about the Black Prisons oland and Latvia. The erection of nuclear missiles on European soil. The separation of the New Europe from the Old.

We were scared of ourselves and we had no way to end the fear and the things that rot and grow from fear. Only America could have ended it. And despite your taboos and your history of civil war and segregation and jim crow and the backlash against affirmative action, you went to the polls and elected an african american who held out a hope for peace. And you brought us peace. I fear war less now.

You have managed to capture the beautiful part of your wonderful country and have made its virtue full again. A Nobel Prize is not enough. This man needs your love. You have a great president and I am filled with envy. I wish we had him as our president. Honest. honest. He has proved more than most. If not to all of the world, then certainly to me here in Switzerland.

This post struck me because it states very clearly the promise that the rest of the world keeps about us. We’ve spent lifetimes ignorant of the impact our country has on the rest of the world - how simply being a place where, seemingly, votes really do count, optimism and freedom are strived for and the best of us is not buried has meaning beyond our borders.

Sure, we’re hardly perfect. Granted, some of our votes haven’t counted and our system is corrupted, but as long as we don’t let assholes like George W. Bush change what we hope to be there’s always a chance to recover. And that’s really it. The Nobel prize is for all of us (well, most of us) recognizing that the hatred, fear and ugliness of the Bush administration and it’s followers is NOT what this country is about. Our voting him out and an unlikely person in says alot about our own hope for the country.

Republicans just don’t get it. Being the nasty bully gets you nowhere. It’s bad foreign policy and a sickness that just grows. As evidence, the bully has become angry, bitter, jealous and is now throwing temper tantrums. It’s unfortunate they do not see how ridiculous and pathetic they look to the rest of us. I’ve never seen the left act in a similar way with the same type of negative energy - ever.

Their loss - and if we’re smart enough to learn from our mistakes this time it will be their loss for a long long time.

Current News, Politics america, Obama novel prize, republican jealously

From Huffington Post:

After its bonus payments ignited a firestorm of criticism earlier this year, American International Group Inc. is asking the federal government to weigh in on the insurer’s plan to resume paying millions in promised retention incentives next week, according to media reports.

AIG, once the world’s largest insurer, has asked the Obama administration’s compensation czar, Kenneth R. Feinberg, to approve the payments in order to head off any public outrage, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.

The budget of my company’s clients have been cut in half due to the economy. We’re just hanging on, really, in hopes that things will bet better by the end of the year. Most people are in the same boat, well, except for Taylor Swift who seems to be doing very well.

Meanwhile, you have these shitbirds at AIG arriving at the rationale that they must pay millions out, once again in less than a year, to these pigs who:

a) can’t get by on half a million or more,

b) have so many offers from other tainted financial institutions that they can string along their current company for more of OUR money,

c) are simply the vessel to which companies like AIG continue to play loose and fast with other people’s money and align their own pockets, or

d) have compromising photos of all the top executives at this firm and can bribe them for whatever they want.

One of my old bosses was a guy who made it big as a commercial director many years back (he is now gone) and was driven EVERYWHERE around Manhattan because he no longer had a license nor did he need one. It was the first time I heard someone utter the phrase, “Once you step into the limo, you never step out.” The difference with this man is he actually worked his way into his position, arrogant as he was.

These paper pushers at AIG are speculators - bad one’s at that - and the failure of that company is incentive enough for NO ONE there to receive one cent more than their previous salary (if that).

I am so fucking sick and tired of these companies insulting my intelligence with this bullshit about how their “best and brightest” will fly the coop if they don’t plop down another million or more in front of them to keep them on. Here’s a word of advice: YOU DON’T HAVE ANY BEST AND BRIGHTEST! THEY ARE WITH THE FIRMS THAT DON’T NEED TAXPAYER BAILOUT MONEY! Your best and brightest are responsible for this mess, and this culture of throwing six to seven figures around like it’s monopoly money is an insult TO EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN WHO REALLY WORKS!

My wife and I live in New York. We make a combined salary of 185,000. We consider ourselves pretty lucky and relatively well-off, even though the national consensus is that we are simply middle class here in New York. Well, let me tell you something. We still take vacations. We still save for our kid’s college education. We still pay all of our bills without worrying (partly because we bought a house we could afford and not a McMansion we couldn’t to show off), we save for retirement and life is not tough - so this suggestion that these fuckheads can’t get by on their base salary (which could be anywhere from $150,000 to $650,000) is a big, steaming pile of crap.

Money is not money to these people. It’s poker chip. Status. A way to measure their shallow lives against that of the broker friend in the next cubicle who just got a summer home in Nantucket and asks you where you’re taking your summer?

The rest of us are paying our taxes and that money is finding it’s way into these people’s pockets - and mind you, they don’t appreciate the weight of that. All that matters to them is that they are getting as much as Jimmy over at Goldman Sachs because they can’t afford that new Lotus unless they do.

I’ll never fault someone who really earns their money, but most of these shitheads don’t. They do menial jobs that anywhere else would be considered middle management - and they’re fleecing us for all we have as we struggle to work through this year. Dicks.

Current News AIG, wall street bonuses

Far right. I know we don’t talk much, primarily because you think you know everything and consider me a fucking douchbag (your words, not mine). Nonetheless, let’s address the root of your credibility as it exists in ANY argument you may have now or in the future:

Sarah Palin, your savior, your standard-bearer, your 2012 candidate, has just quit her position as governor of Alaska because….well, we don’t know what because is. What we do know is that she couldn’t handle random bloggers creating photoshop files of her image. She’s threatening litigation against anyone who looks at her cross-eyed. She couldn’t deal with letting the public know the truth about anything, therefore trying to have operative during the McCain campaign lie about her husband’s secession membership. She just couldn’t handle the heat…so, naturally, she still leaves the impression to 75% of us that she had no business being part of a Presidential campaign or public office of any sort.

Mark Sanford? Well, once again, a Governor who just couldn’t seem to leave his personal preferences about gay marriage and other issues away from the Governor’s desk, a man who decided ON HIS OWN that the stimulus money would NOT go to those who need it in his state but would, instead, go to paying off the state debt…well, this man has cheated on his wife, lied to her and his children, lied to his staff and the state, and disappeared for a week without any ability for followup. It’s nice he’s in love, but his actions leave the impression for 75% of us that he has no business being in high office and would have been a terrible candidate for President.

John Ensign, Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, Ted Stevens, Scooter Libby, Helen Chenowith, Jack Abramoff…do I REALLY need to go on? I could list in detail the crimes and failures of these scumbags, but will it matter to you?

Yes, I’m talking to you - 25%ers - the people who cannot seem to let go of this idea that George W. Bush was a great President and the republican party of the last 20 years was great and true and honest. Do you REALLY want to have this argument anymore? We outnumber you. Our facts outnumber your innuendos, rumors and lies. Our level of accomplishments outnumber your idiots’ countless fuckups, illegal maneuvers and outright disasters. Our moral authority trumps yours. Our ability to act like functioning, responsible, intelligent adults outnumbers your ability to act like spoiled, nasty, ignorant, self-centered children.

Our President is doing the things that smart adults with a grasp of the weight of their decisions does - and is changing our world for the better (on the back of a disasterous economy YOU helped create and a continued obstruction your leaders (heh!) continue to push). Don’t like it? Don’t care for the change in our government? You think your opinions and strategies are still valid? Well, THEY’RE NOT! And, by the way WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW!? Take a good, hard look at the list about of the people you spent so much time throwing in our faces as the saviors of our political process, the incorrupable Elliot Ness’s to our radical, counter-culture Al Capones.

Let me state this in the clearest terms I can: YOU PEOPLE ARE FUCKING IDIOTS! YOUR CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVES AND POLITICAL IDOLS ARE EITHER FUCKING IDIOTS WHO COULDN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU OR ME - AND AREN’T SMART ENOUGH TO COUNT TO 2 or they’re MEDIA PUNDITS who play your emotions and push your buttons TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH! They ALSO couldn’t care about you and, very likely, don’t even take your side of the argument seriously! Unlike us (that is, the 75% of real Americans out there), you are not SMART ENOUGH to understand that when someone bends you over and takes you up the rear without your consent they’re not making love to you. THEY’RE RAPING YOU! These heroes of yours are RAPING YOU and poking the rest of us in the process.

Go back to school. Read some books. PLEASE become something other than ignorant, stubborn lemmings who couldn’t recognize reality from an acid trip. Please. And if you absolutely won’t then go crawl under a rock and STAY THERE!

Current News, Politics Mark Sanford, republican losers, Sarah Palin

This country is fully of wusses: From CNN:

A new national poll suggests that a bare majority of Americans support President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning indicates that most people are worried that their health care costs would go up if the administration’s proposals are passed and only one in five think that their families would be better off under the Obama plan.

Fifty-four percent say their medical insurance costs will increase if the Obama plan becomes law, with 17 percent feeling their costs will decrease. Around one in four say their costs will remain the same. And only one in five say their family will be better off if the president’s plan becomes law, with 35 percent feeling they would be worse off, and 44 percent saying they would be about the same.

It all comes down to taxes and fear, doesn’t it? Imagine if we lived in a country where EVERYONE realized that countries do not run on fumes and the majority’s gut reaction wasn’t based on being an absolute shivering little coward.

When you’re talking about healthcare reform, there is, of course, a million ways to skin a cat. The republicans - over two decades - have had ONE idea - let the insurance companies and the drug companies do their thing. Unfortunately - for anyone but the stupidest in our nation - this is the same as being lazy and not doing anything. Furthermore, it doesn’t work. We’ve had this approach for as long as we can remember and people are suffering because of it.

Clinton tried his best to make the change but got bogged down in a healthcare plan that the republicans could attack easily. Then he backed away from it and that was that.

While I don’t bow down to fear or the creeping psychology of it (I was in Manhattan during 9/11 and saw things no one should have to see), I do worry that this might be the last good chance in my relative youth for universal healthcare to break through. It goes without saying that it’s a necessity. Every advanced country has some form of it. Hell, we do too! (Medicare/Medicaid).

The ONLY thing that stands in the way are the fears of a large minority, the willingness of the republicans to take advantage of that fear and this fantasy some people have that this country that taxes are unnecessary. Hey PEOPLE! Don’t want anymore taxes? Watch your infrastructure crumble. See your parents and grandparents die because there’s no social security check in the mail. Watch millions of children and poor adults homeless on the street, dieing of things no one has died from in 200 years because hospitals won’t take them, and watch the republican’s largest supporters laugh at you as they clink their wine glasses together and pat each other on the back at how great the free market has worked for them.

Taxes won’t hurt you. Fear of the unknown will. Get a backbone and support Obama’s plan and think about what you’d be offered if McCain was president.

Current News, Politics cnn poll, healthcare reform, Obama, republicans

There is a pathetic excuse for a human being out there that seems to feel his narrow-mindedness has value. His name is Matt Barber from the Liberty Councel. Here he is commenting on the Matthew Shepard act recently (From District Chronicles):

Conservative Christian leaders are fighting a bill that would provide federal hate-crimes coverage to gays and lesbians, prompting questions of who, if anyone, should be protected by such laws.

With a Democrat-controlled Congress and a president who has indicated his support for the Matthew Shepard Act, time may be running out for the bill’s opponents. To stop the legislation, a few Christian leaders have suggested repealing all hate-crimes law, which would undo historic protections for race and even religion.

“The entire notion of hate-crimes legislation is extraneous and obsolete,” said Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with the conservative nonprofit Liberty Counsel, adding that he believes hate-crimes laws are unconstitutional.

And, once again a few weeks back, on other issues:

A Christian college in India allows applicants to indicate whether they are male, female, or transgender when they enroll.

Matt Barber, cultural affairs director at Liberty Counsel, says Madras Christian College administrators must have misread the book of Genesis, believing God created male, female, and transgender.

“You know, this is just ridiculous and insane,” he contends. “It’s really sad that a Christian college is joining in and entertaining this leftist, secular, humanist delusion that is transgenderism.”

Way back when I was a younger man I wrote an opinion response in the New York Post voicing my opposition to a commenter who criticized Michael Dukakis for marrying a Jewish woman. At 24-years-old, this kind of religious descrimination sickened me as much then as it does now.

There’s little I despise more than a religious figure or religious “representative” quietly (or, sometimes, not so quietly) promoting racial intolerance in the name of God. Many of these religious leaders on the far-right are doing just that. From the old school group of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart to the current assholes holding onto that last handful of hate in a world that has less and less to do with them, their words and actions are embarrassments to the rest of the human race.

Fortunately, in this country, the people are on the other side of their nasty rants:

A 2007 Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans (68 percent) favor expanding hate-crimes protections. Majorities of frequent churchgoers (62 percent), conservatives (57 percent), and Republicans (60 percent) also were in favor of the legislation.

It is no doubt in my mind that this, along with much of the molestation trouble the churches have been publicly dealing with over the last 20 years, is what’s made organized religion less and less appealing to the audience it used to own. The average religious person might want to believe in God, but they sure as hell don’t want to do it in the name of hatred and narrow thinking. This is why the only “religions” that seem to be flourishing are the extreme ones of which include The Catholic Traditionalist Movement and Al Qaeda. So sad that the weakest minded of our world are finding each other.

And, as far as Matt Barber is concerned, this narrow-minded fuckhead may well find that if there is a heaven, there is also a hell - and his statements might make him the perfect candidate for that particular institution.

Current News, Lifestyle liberty councel, matt barber

I was 5 years old when The Jackson Five came into my life. I got up early Saturday morning to watch the cartoon (followed in earlier years by the Beatles cartoon and a few years later by the Osmonds). I had a Jackson Five poster on my wall till the age of 7 and missed their music as the seventies left them behind.

Then, in my first year of college 1982, Michael Jackson came back. Off The Wall was a huge hit, “Rock with you” was part of the soundtrack of my freshman year and a few years later, the hits from “Thriller” became the videos you waited for when lounging around and watching MTV. Loved “Human Nature” and “She’s out of my life.” Pretty much considered Michael Jackson part of the tapestry of growing up.

I was 12 years old when Farrah Fawcett burst onto the scene. Along with Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson, I collected every poster the three of them graced. I, of course, had Farrah’s most famous and, along with my male friends, would move in close on it to contemplate the one, lone nipple impression. We watched “Charlie’s Angels” religiously and hoped for the best when Farrah ventured into features with “Somebody Killed Her Husband.” Every girl I knew copied her hair (yes, even in elementary school) and every guy had a thing for her. She was the face of the 70s, more of a phenomenon than Britney is today and a part of our memory of that time.

With both of these icons gone, a part of my youth has been taken away. As a middle-aged man I don’t lament these things with the level of emotion I would if I were in my teens or twenties, being preoccupied with family, children and obligations. Maybe that’s good - the distraction.

Nonetheless, I remember them both fondly, thank them for being the latent images of my childhood and hope in years to come their impression remains in the public eye so I can tell my kids, “These were the people I loved when I was your age.”

Current News, Lifestyle Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson

There. Does that get your attention? There’s nothing “funny” about this title, but that’s the point. Others may argue about the “filthy” and “bitch” part. The lying is pretty well documented. Take umbrage to being called a bitch? Well, how do you think David Letterman feels when you call him a molester, you filthy, lying bitch. Shock words can go both ways. If you want to swing that gauntlet, don’t feign shock when it swings back in your direction. Don’t like my assessment what you are? Well, go fuck yourself.

It’s one thing to show your distaste for a joke involving your family, but to viciously LIE about the intention of that joke, and the target of it, and use it as a vehicle to destroy the reputation of a man who’s far more talented, intelligent and experienced than you will ever be - in every aspect of life - is sad.

Intelligent (and for that matter, unintelligent people) recognized that Letterman was directing that barb to the only daughter the public knows, Bristol. Having nothing else to offer the public than your division and passive-aggressive hate rants, I guess you saw this as another opportunity to take the spotlight for a while. You’ve already pimped out your children to further your naked ambition. Now you’ve got an issue when it backfires on you?

Well, I don’t really believe that’s the case anyway. I think you love this. I believe your concern for your children in the spotlight is a little bit false. I think it’s a far more cynical reason for your attacks. You were finding yourself unrepresented in the media and this was a convenient avenue back in. What does it matter if others are the casualties of your ambition. What does it matter if you can’t actually get press for something important - such as ideas. How important is it that you’re not intelligent or morally strong enough to get in front of the cameras and tell the truth rather than resort to easy lies to drum up support for your platform.

Heck, our last President lied about things far more important like the benefactors of the middle class tax cuts, the reason for starting a war with Iraq, the true laziness of his response to Hurricane Katrina, the real inner workings of Valerie Plame’s outing, the Justice Department firings, torture, etc. etc. etc.

Looks like you learned from the experts. And what did you learn? I’ll tell you. Repeat after me:

“I cannot win an argument based on my ideas or the facts. I do not have the articulation capacity to persuade anyone that my ideas have merit. I do not have the credibility to get anyone on my side because of my slim accomplishments and flighty past. So, in an attempt to overcome these obstacles, I will do the most politically expedient thing: I will lie as strongly as I need to in order to gain the upper hand. If my lies are not strong enough, I will lie some more - and do so in a way that will trigger emotions and press buttons - probably buttons that shouldn’t be pressed so casually. I will lie like this because I am insecure…and uneducated on what I’m talking about…and not up to the task. But maybe if I lie, nobody will see that.

Maybe if I lie, I can get my way like I used to when I was five years old. What does it matter whether I spilled the milk or not. My brother can get spanked for it, because, really, it’s all about me and my needs, isn’t it?

Current News republican lies, Sarah Palin

My heart goes out to these two women currently held in North Korea. This situation has haunted me for the last week and it’s easy to understand why. It is the same anxiety one would feel at the prospect of finding themselves in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization, distant from familiar help and facing an immediate unknown that will not include those you love.

The only thing to do is to hope there is an ounce of compassion from the North Koreans. It was obviously a case of mistaken intentions. The best thing they can do is return these two women to their families quickly. Even in the most dire of circumstances, we can only hope that people who do not know freedom the way we do will find some sense of justice and satisfaction in reuniting a mother with her daughter and a wife with her husband.

Hopefully the Obama administration will find a way to reason with this country. In the meantime, the best thing to do is to keep our mouths shut and pray there is resolution soon. And for those who have criticism - this is not the time.

Current News Euna Lee, Laura Ling, Lisa Ling, North Korea