January, 2008 archive
Countrywide Was on Your Side 1
Yeah.
Right.
Her first mortgage was with Contrywide:
Meanwhile, Countrywide sent her a stream of offers for a home equity loan to consolidate her credit-card debt. She said that every time she got on the phone to confirm a payment, Countrywide customer-service representatives badgered her about getting a second loan. In 2005, she relented, taking out a $15,000 home-equity loan. “I thought it was going to save me money in the long run,” she said.
But she did not know that she was only paying interest on the home-equity loan and that the interest rate was climbing, until it reached the 15 percent to 16 percent range, about the same as the credit-card rate.
A Countrywide spokesman could not be reached for comment on the terms of Morgan-Coleman’s loan.
The moral of the story, as far as I can see, is never believe anyone who’s paid on commission.
Not even the clerk in your local Radio Slum.
Then, again, I’ve been a happy Radio Slum customer for years. Their salespersons have never misled me.
Let me reconsider the moral:
Never believe anyone who’s paid to lie on commission.
Wait a minute!
We are in big trouble because of liars who are on salary.
Let me try again.
Never believe anyone.
Nah, that doesn’t work. Occasionally, someone tells the truth.
Let’s try again.
Never believe anyone who owes allegiance to or donates primarily to the Party of Privilege.
Whaddya think?
The Candidates Debate 0
Please pass the whoopers. From Fact Check dot org:
- Romney claimed Massachusetts gained jobs “every single month” he was governor after hitting a low point. In fact the job gains seesawed, with seven of 36 months producing job losses.
- Huckabee escalated his misleading claims about cutting taxes, saying he cut taxes for the first time in the history of the state of Arkansas, which is untrue. Others put through tax cuts before he did. Overall, Huckabee raised taxes.
- Romney falsely claimed to have been endorsed by the Massachusetts Right to Life Association. Actually, he was endorsed by a single chapter of a different group.
- Thompson, accusing Huckabee of Democratic tendencies, said he’d been endorsed by the National Education Association. But he was actually endorsed only by the New Hampshire chapter of that nationwide teacher’s organization.
- Huckabee claimed that highways in Arkansas had gone from the “worst road system in the country” to the “most improved” in the ratings of a trucking magazine. He failed to mention that despite the improvement they remained fourth from the bottom on the “worst” list.
- Giuliani asserted that cutting the corporate tax rate “will get more revenues.” Unlike his earlier supply-side claims, he can point this time to an economic study suggesting that he might be right, but it’s not a certainty.
Drumbeats (Updated) 0
From the Department of Redundancy Department:
If you think your government won’t lie to you, remember the Gulf of Tonkin.
Then, again, Lyndon didn’t lie all that much. Not like the Current Federal Administration, which wouldn’t know a truth if the truth bit it in the tush.
Addendum, 1/11/2008:
From upyernoz, who doesn’t believe in upper case:
May a Thousand Swiftboats Sail 0
A dollar to a doughnut that these are wingnut smears. Follow the link to read the whole post. Please.
From Fact Check dot org:
One claims that Obama is “certainly a racist” by virtue of belonging to Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which it says “will accept only black parishoners” and espouses a commitment to Africa. Actually, a white theology professor says he’s been “welcomed enthusiastically” at the church, as have other non-blacks.
Another e-mail claims that Obama “is a Muslim,” attended a “Wahabi” school in Indonesia, took his Senate oath on the Koran, refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and is part of an Islamic plot to take over the U.S. Each of these statements is false.
These false appeals to bigotry and fear remind us of the infamous whispering campaign of eight years ago, when anonymous messages just before the South Carolina primary falsely accused Republican candidate John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child by a black woman.
When the truth is against one, one resorts to lies.
And, after the last seven years, that surprises us how?
WYSIWYG 3
The field of pretenders to the throne of King George the Wurst presents interesting contrasts of genuineness.
On the one hand, we have the Empty Suit.
The Empty Suit is definitely not WYSIWYG.
Because there is nothing behind the facade. Unlike in the movie, there is truly nobody behind the curtain. Just some kind of amorphous entity that believes it should be president because, well, it believes it should be president.
On the other end of the scale is Mike Huckabee.
He is definitely WYSIWYG.
A sincere and honest Republican candidate.
That makes him truly an exceptional person.
Sadly, when you look closely, what you see is really not all that attractive.
Yeah, he does seem to have an affinity for the poor and the dispossessed, an affinitely that seems to be alienating him from his party. This, of course, is not surprising, as the Republican Party is now and has ever been the Party of Privilege and does not welcome those who speak for the dispossessed.
And, yeah, he seems very likable.
Of course, that is to be expected. He is an ordained Baptist minister. He is a people-person.
Think about it.
For a man or woman (whoops, he’s a Southern Baptist, they don’t allow women ministers these days) of good will, the ministry is a demanding calling. One’s time and one’s schedule is not one’s own. One must be ready to go when the phone rings, display sympathy to the unsympathetic, offer mercy to the merciless, kindness to the cruel.
Almost all the ministers I’ve known have been people persons (with the exception of one guy about two miles up the road who’s an arrogant conceited something-or-other–he even chased the local Boy Scout troop out of his church because they were too much trouble–but he’s the exemption that proves the deduction, or something like that.)
After extensive research (a phone call to my pastor), I determined that seminaries do not teach courses in how to be likable, which reinforces my initial believe that the Huck’s first-impression likability is part of his personality, and probably part of what led him to the ministry.
Now, I was brought up in the Southern Baptist Church.
And I am still very much a Baptist, doctrinally speaking, that is (I used to substitute teach in Roman Catholic Sunday School–it was such a temptation to discuss the concept of Baptism of the Believer, but I always resisted that temptation).
I grew up before the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by the Pharisees, who value the Law and Appearances more than they value faith and works, who value the Kingdom of the Earth more than the Kingdom of Faith.
And the Church in which I grew up did not deny the evidence of things seen.
Yeah, Huck is genuine. Genuineness is refreshing.
But it is not a qualification for office.
Neither is denial of reality. For if one denies reality in one place, one will deny it in another.
And we have seen what that brings.
Does Huckabee’s creationism matter for his claims to the presidency? It matters a lot, but it is important to be clear why. The problem is not that Huckabee is a fundamentalist who believes in the inerrancy of scripture. One of the defining principles of the US polity, and the single most important document of the enlightenment, is the Virginia statute for religious freedom of 1786, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. It stipulates that there be no religious test for public office. Religious adherence, or the lack of it, is a matter of personal conscience in which the state has no business.
It’s okay for our leader to be a realist. It is even okay for our leader to be an idealist. Hell, an idealist might be nice.
But it is not okay for our leader to live in a fantasy.
BTDT.
Afterthought:
Oh, yeah. He releases rapists to prey again.
Empty Suit 0
Jonathan Last in today’s local rag:
Mitt Romney: Dead after Iowa. Now the carcass has been cremated.
Why don’t people like Romney? His campaign has become the most remorselessly dishonest operation in politics today. He’s for abortion; he’s against abortion. He’s going to dominate Iowa; he’s thrilled with second place. He thinks the early states are determinative and national numbers are meaningless; he’s running a national campaign and not concerned with early small states. On the morning of the primary, he said that he was going to win New Hampshire. He lost by five points. Voters can’t trust a single thing he says.
I watched his concession speech.
There’s no there there.
Bushonomics (Updated) 0
BBC:
It said that Friday’s employment report, which sent shares tumbling worldwide, confirmed that the US is in the first month of a recession.
Its view is controversial, with banks such as Lehman Brothers disagreeing.
But a reserve member of the committee that sets US rates warned that it could do little about the below-trend growth expected in the next six months.
“I am concerned that developments on the inflation front will make the Fed’s policy decisions more difficult in 2008,” Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.
Via Raw Story.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
An opposing view, using a somewhat unorthodox economic indicator:
Robert McLellan has his own leading economic indicator, and it’s not pointing toward a recession.
McLellan, the chief operating officer of Accurate Lift Truck Inc., of West Berlin, said he watched the company’s fleet of forklifts available for short-term rentals.
If Accurate’s customers – warehouses, trucking companies and others – are busy moving goods, the economy is perking right along and his short-term rental fleet of forklifts “is flying out the door,” McLellan said.
And how is business now? “We’re probably 95 percent rented,” he said. That is actually more than he would like.
“The rule of thumb is, you should never be more than 85 percent rented,” to ensure smooth operations, he said.
Oh! Look! Someone Who Got that $10,000 Deductible Health Insurance Policy I Couldn’t Get Because I Might Need It (Updated. What, Already? Yes, Already) 1
Her premium was smaller than the one I was looking at because she was not trying to insure a dependant.
But she can’t afford it any more (emphasis added):
To keep costs reasonable – at least what is considered reasonable in the health insurance game – my plan has a $10,000 deductible. This means that I pay for everything – doctor’s visits, lab tests, prescriptions – out of pocket. The insurance company will start covering anything after I’ve reached the $10,000 mark.
Gee, thanks.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve not gone to the doctor because I couldn’t afford it. I’ve waited out that rattling cough to see if it would go away on its own. I’ve wrapped my hands in bandages to see if my eczema outbreaks, which left open sores on my hands, would self-seal through over-the-counter lotions and perseverance. I’ve even skipped routine tests because to do so would put me, conservatively, $300 more in the hole. I don’t play soccer anymore for fear of what one broken bone could do to my bank account. And I really like soccer.
To put it bluntly: It stinks being underinsured. Health care is my second-highest monthly bill – only to my mortgage – and still I feel like I can’t see the doctor when I’m sick. Still, I pay my bills on time, both to the insurance companies and my doctors. And how am I thanked for it? With another rate hike – up from $373.27 to $429.26 a month for this year.
Well, someone has to pay the insurance company executives’ salaries.
If not I, why not her?
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
Daniel DiRito shows how we’re not getting our money’s worth.
You Can Fight City Hall 0
But City Hall doesn’t fare too well against the phone company (Yes, Virginia, Ventnor is more than a square on the Monopoly game board):
The city’s telephone service provider shut off service for non-payment.
But it wasn’t because the city forgot to pay its phone bill for three months that ACC Business, a division of ATT, which provides local and long distance phone service to the city, cut them off, according to municipal administrator Andrew J. McCrosson Jr.
The city had refused to pay a new monthly minimum charge to the company after a previous three-year contract expired in October, putting them on the delinquent list.
(snip)
McCrosson said that over the course of the past year or so the city, which currently spends about $25,000 a year on the service, has dramatically cut its phone costs by implementing new employee procedures and installing a new phone system. When the old contract expired, the city wanted to continue to see that savings reflected in its monthly bill, he said.
“Instead they wanted us to sign a new contract that called for a minimum amount to be paid monthly which we believed would be higher than we are actually currently spending,” McCrosson said. “We’re not happy with that arrangement so we didn’t sign the contract and we haven’t paid the bill.”
I guess the moral of the story is that, if you save on your phone bill, the phone company will want to charge you more.
Get Those Homeless Shelters Ready (Updated) 1
It’s just gonna get worse.
That’s bad news for house prices.
“Foreclosures are adding to the inventory of unsold homes, and are worsening the housing outlook,” said Patrick Newport, an economist with Global Insight Inc., an economic research firm in Waltham, Mass.
Foreclosures are concentrated in California, Arizona, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Those states are going to face the most severe downturn in house prices – 20 percent to 30 percent in some areas.
And get ready for the solution from the Current Federal Administration: More tax cuts for the rich (via Susie):
When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype — by the claim that America’s prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit.
But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from “It’s morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!†to “The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!â€
Addendum, 1/8/2008:
Those would be the tax cuts, heavily skewed to the rich, that don’t even expire for three more years.
But wait!
Making the Rich Richer 0
How it was done:
The author was interviewed on Fresh Air last week. From the website:
Cay Johnston covers tax policy for The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on that beat. His previous book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else, was a best seller.
His description of how the Current Federal Administrator got his fortune by spinning the Texas Rangers for taxpayers’ money and a tax increase is well worth the 45 minutes of the interview. (If you want to go right to it, it’s approximately–and I do mean approximately, as I was in the dental chair when I listened to it–it’s about 20 minutes in.)
Follow the link to the website; it’s well worth a listen.
Geek News Central Wins Award 0
Todd Cochrane’s Geek News Central has been named one of the ten best podcasts of 2007 by Podcasts dot com.
Read Todd’s announcement here.
Check out the podcast, too. It ranges over lots of different topics, not just computer stuff.
Deadstate 0
I run my own little website, including this blog, out of the next room, the one right over there.
The site’s not very big. I certainly don’t need a server farm to run it.
But, by heavens, if it doesn’t work, it’s my problem, not anyone else’s.
Then, again, I’m a lefty. I know the difference between the things under my control and the things not under my control.
Not like the subjects of this post.
Please, someone, get them a copy of Apache for Dummies.
Empty Suit 0
This blog post from Dick Polman covers so much more ground than this quotation, trashing both Democrats and Republicans, but, honest to Pete, this captures the character, or lack thereof, of the Empty Suit, as well as anything I’ve read:
In other news, Fact Check dot org weighs in on the Republicans and the Democrats in last night’s “debates.”
Fantasy Dome 0
The Current Federal Administrator clearly does not see himself as a liar who makes up wars and destroys the fabric of the Constitution of the United States of America.
But, then, the White House has admitted that it makes up its own “reality.”
When I was much younger, I used to make up my own reality also.
But I knew it was made up and it usually wore off in four to six hours.
Not four to six years.
Which leads me to another musing: the phenomenally stupid idea of a politician’s (or anyone else) “looking to his or her ‘legacy.'”
What more does that mean than that someone is doing something because of how it looks, not because it is the right thing to do”?
We already have a perfectly good word for persons who do things because of how those things look, rather than because they are the right things to do:
“Hypocrites.”
A “legacy” (or, more properly, since no Last Will and Testament is involved, a reputation) grows from all the things someone has done, not some last, desperate, “Casey at the Bat” effort to salvage an already failed reputation.
Mr. Bush can look to his legacy all he wants.
But all of us are forced to look at his legacy: failed wars, wasted lives, failing economy (oh, yeah, Raymond Krauss says “Buy gold”), lies, deceipt, and (there’s that word again) hypocrisy.
And no amount of last-inning grandstanding can overcome the score of the first eight innings. All the pitchers pitches–sales pitches, that is–have been used up.
Sorry, in this game, Mighty Bushie has already struck out.
Anyhoo, back to the Fantasy Dome:
Dan Froomkin:
“When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative,” Bush said of himself to Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: “I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human — human being, and believes in human dignity.”
The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation — “liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria.”
On a personal basis, Bush told Bilbassy-Charters that he hopes that people would know “that he hurts when he sees poverty and hopelessness” and “that he’s a realistic guy.”
Bush’s self-image contrasts sharply with his image among his fellow Americans. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the job is doing, and a CNN poll in November found that 58 percent of Americans rated Bush either a poor president, a very poor president, or the worst president ever.
Bush’s view of himself is particularly delusional as he heads to a region that remains traumatized, angry and distrustful on account of Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, his antagonism of Iran and his perceived crusade against Islam.
I Would Much Rather Be at Drinking Liberally . . . 0
Tomorrow, Tangier, 18th and Lombard, 18;00-21:00, than where I will be, having a tooth extracted and an implant implanted.
Fortunately, I’ve got a bottle of Rushies left over from the last root canal.
In other news, it finally stopped raining long enough for me to drag out the mulching mower and chop of the leaves.
Demystified 0
Jon Swift makes sense of the Iowa caucus. His analysis should be required reading. He starts by explaining how the results of the caucuses actually have nothing to do with the results of the caucuses:
Follow the link for the full analysis.
Empty Suit, Again 0
Via TPM Election Central.
Romney now:
Romney then, when he was campaigning for his gig as governor:
He has always stood for reform and change.
