My Thoughts and Prayers Are With Mike G. and His Family

Dana has a post up linking to a post by Jeromy Brown at Iowa Liberal that fellow blogger Mike Ganzeveld was mugged this weekend at a cash machine in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

From Jeromy's post:

I’ll try to do some more blogging this weekend while Mike recovers from a crazed attack by a bunch of disgruntled rightwing bloggers who were screaming, “Long live Sarah Palin!” They broke his hand and mashed up his face pretty well, but Mike managed to kill one and maim the genitals of another. He would have maimed the genitals of both, but as you already know one out of two rightwing bloggers are eunuchs.

The crazy thing is that only the part about the broken hand and the face is true, and it was a mugging at a cash machine in Fort Dodge, Iowa, folks. Fort Dodge. I blame the rap music. Okay, actually I mean Dana Pico blames the rap music. Let’s all hope for a speedy recovery and nice strong pain pills to tide him over in the meantime.

Dana's snarky response was awesome:

And, feeling some snarkiness license thanks to Mr Brown’s post, I’d point out the old maxim that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. I’m looking forward to Mike joining the staff of CSPT as soon as his hand heals!

I was upset by the news of this crime. I don't see eye to eye with Mike on everything, but I have enjoyed reading his posts and his comments always keep me on my toes. The blogosphere has its share of nutty, bad behavior, but rarely does it compare to real life. This is a reminder of the dangerous society we live in, even in places we don't think of as being unsafe. I mean, Fort Dodge, Iowa?

Here's praying for a speedy recovery for Mike and, as Dana has said, that the criminals are quickly caught, prosecuted, and jailed for this.

Shouldn't We Get to Blame the Clintons for the Economic Meltdown...

Since their Treasury Secretary is in charge of Citigroup? I'm sure if a former Bush official were in charge of some greedy financial institution, we'd be reading blog post after blog post about why George W. Bush is, somehow, personally responsible for the debacle. Why aren't lefty blogs castigating Democrats for this mess?

Oh, wait. I remember.

Shop Til You Drop?

This is why I don't shop on Black Friday.

Sounds Oddly Familiar

I read about the verdict in this cyber-bullying case,

A Los Angeles federal jury today convicted a Missouri mother of misdemeanor charges in the nationally watched MySpace cyber-bullying case involving the suicide of a 13-year-old girl. But the jury rejected more serious felony charges against Lori Drew.

Drew, 49, was accused of violating federal computer statutes and one count of conspiracy for creating the MySpace account in the name of a fictitious 16-year-old boy and using it to engage in an online relationship with 13-year-old Megan Meier.

Meier, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, after the fictitious boy, “Josh Evans,” told her the world would be a better place without her, prosecutors alleged.

and thought of a comment made by Jeromy Brown at this post:

to be honest, too deranged and dishonest to continue besmirching the Earth’s good soil and air with your existence

I have to admit that when Jeromy wrote that, I was shocked. Not because of the stupidity behind such hyperbole, but because it wouldn't occur to most people to write things like that, particularly over political disagreement.

Fortunately, I'm not a 16-year-old who doesn't realize there are lots of sadistic people out there in the world who like to hide behind the anonymity of the internet to say things that would get them, at the very least, a punch in the nose in real life. The slap on the wrist Drew received is outrageous.

I've seen a lot of bizarre things in the 10 years I've been trolling around the internet. I've always found it amazing the way people see anonymity as permission to behave in the most horrible fashion possible, usually over things that are not all that important. There are untold numbers of women bloggers, for example, who have been threatened with violence of every sort, and have been called crybabies or victims for pointing out the despicable nature of such acts. But these comments aren't acceptable in a civilized society, and most people recognize that.

Of course, there are whiners who behave as though such cyberbullying is directed only at them for saying unpopular things. Unfortunately, it's becoming de rigeur on the internet, so it does lose its potency after, say, the 500th attack of this nature. But even so, the Drew case should make people aware that these words, which would be actionable if said or written in real life, should not be tolerated in cyberspace.

Would a President Michelle Obama Still Have to Do the Housework?

I was going to make that "Would a President Michelle Obama Still Have to Cook the Turkey?" since I was going to write this yesterday but got busy (and, frankly, too content to write about such contentious issues).

The inspiration comes from this post by Echidne of the Snakes.

To pretend that it can be done only tells us that women can be a little more than the ever-hovering but silent and undemanding female angels traditionally assumed to take care of every successful man: they can also be the junior assistant office managers in the families of famous men.

Women can balance their own work, their partners' work, the children, the parents and grandparents, the Thanksgiving turkey, the birthday cards, the care of the sick, the need to look young and sexy, the dustbunnies under the beds, the school menus, the parental chauffeuring services. They can balance all that, somehow, while walking on the tightrope of cultural femininity, the demands of a labor market which still assumes that every worker has a little lady at home to give succor and psychological counseling and cleaning services. And then the woman-haters write how women don't have the same genius as men do, how no woman has ever invented something like the automobile or designed a great church, how women therefore are obviously biologically incapable of anything but -- well --- playing the role of Girl Fridays for famous men.

So I'm angry. How very awkward for me. But really, why can't we keep the limelight on the real question Ruth Marcus asked, for longer than one fleeting second: What can be done to make the sexual division of labor within families more egalitarian? And if we don't want to make those changes, how do we provide women with equal opportunities in other spheres of life? The answer must not focus on all the ways that women alone could somehow achieve that. Days are still only twenty-four hours long, even for us of the girly persuasion.

To my knowledge, women have always been expected to take charge of the home and the children. I've always assumed this is in part because women give birth to children and, therefore, spend a lot of time caring for them first. So, the tasks women have traditionally worked on were things that could be done with children in tow. Men, OTOH, have had the freedom--and responsibility--to go out and do the dangerous, tough things, which spurred them to greater skill and innovation in those pursuits. After agriculture was invented and animals were domesticated, men had more time to spare, and thus began inventing and philosophizing. But women still had to do the things they'd always done as far as taking care of the house and children.

So, what does all this have to do with musing about a President Michelle Obama still having to cook dinner and wash the pricey uniforms that her children will wear to their over-priced private school (can't have them attend public school. Oh, no!)? Echidne referenced this Ruth Marcus column, she noted that Michelle is "Mommy in Chief," and that she is still faced with the age-old problems women face in this life: balancing your individual needs with the rest of the family and why women must do this and men don't have to.

When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, my first reaction was to wince at her words. My second reaction was to identify with them.

I was okay, actually, with what Obama said. But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly? Is it really good for the team -- the team here being working women -- to have the "mommy" stamp so firmly imprinted on her identity?

And most of all: What does it say about the condition of modern women that Obama, catapulted by her husband's election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounded so strangely retro -- more Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?

She is, after all -- by résumé, anyway -- more Hillary than Jackie. But the painful paradox of campaign 2008 is that it came tantalizingly close to giving us an Ivy League-educated female lawyer in the Oval Office but yielded an Ivy League-educated female lawyer sketching out a supremely traditional first lady role.

I'm not really sure what Marcus would have Michelle do; it's not like First Lady is a governmental role voted on by the American people or an administration post nominated by the president. She's just the president's wife. That we've decided being First Lady means something doesn't make it something.

And so, Michelle Obama, executive and attorney, is reduced to Mommy in Chief, whose biggest decision will be whether Malia gets waffles and Sasha gets the Cocoa Puffs of if it's the other way around. Ok, maybe she'll have to figure out which dress designer to use and how to conduct the First Lady teas or something, too. But we don't expect her to sit in on cabinet meetings or anything.

That trivializing of her life and accomplishments brings us back to my musing. If Michelle Obama were president, would Barack be expected to be Daddy in Chief, making sure the girls' socks matched and the homework was done? Or would he be allowed to be Something More than Mr. Michelle?

This was a question asked quite a bit during the election when the Left was constantly bashing Sarah Palin. One of the accusations hurled early on was that she wasn't vice presidential material because she wasn't a Good Mother. And how do we know she wasn't a Good Mother? Because she was a governor, which meant she had so many duties to concentrate on that she wasn't home to make the cheese dogs and discuss Alaskan energy policy on a regular basis.



So, would a President Michelle Obama be expected to discuss foreign policy while making Christmas cookies with her kidlets? I have mixed feelings about this one.

First, the Left is much more forgiving of liberal women when they don't live up to traditional expectations for women. Like my British mom told me about the Royals, "They are not people like you and me. They're better." That's the way liberals view liberal women.

But on the other hand, as this past election cycle showed, being a woman--liberal or conservative--holds you to an entirely different set of standards from those expected of men. So, in that sense, President Michelle Obama would be expected to prepare the Thanksgiving stuffing just like her great-grandmother had done it back in 1910, even as she dealt with foreign policy crises and economic questions.

In short, we are not so advanced that women are allowed not to be Mommy in Chief, regardless of what other roles in life we have.

Where's Joe Biden?

Bidentity Crisis: Where's Joe?

More than three weeks into the transition, and Vice-president elect Joe Biden generates less buzz than the non-existent first puppy.

The vice president-elect has not spoken publicly since the election, and was at Barack Obama's side just once this week as the president-elect delivered a series of grim news conferences on the economy.

Obama instead appears to be at the center of his longtime Chicago circle.

Biden was just designed to give Obama foreign policy experience (even though Biden hadn't done anything, either). His job is done.

For Thanksgiving

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary. Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder. John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer.

For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.

Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said, "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior."

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a traumatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

Happy Thanksgiving!

"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

—George Washington, letter to Thomas Nelson, August 20, 1778

The New Political Reality

I agree with Robert Stacy McCain, and, by extension, Matthew Yglesias when they say that, come January, Republicans will be irrelevant to the governing of the U.S.

There's plenty of talk about "bipartisanship," but that's just more Democrat bullshit trying to cover their asses and drag Republicans into making sorry-ass deals to get some pork for their constituents. If Republicans are smart, they'll allow Democrats to actually govern for the next two to four years and give Americans that government they supposedly voted for. Giving Dems bipartisan cover shouldn't be in the negotiations.

Democrats don't need Republicans to pass a single piece of legislation over the next two years. They have such big majorities in both houses of Congress, that they can do what they want. And that's what should scare the pants off all Americans.

One of the keys to organizing a GOP resistance will be denying Obama and the Democrats the mantle of "bipartisanship" for any of their key measures. That is to say, House and Senate Republicans need to make sure that they whip the maximum number of "no" votes on Obama's agenda items, so that in 2010, they are in position to hang that agenda around the Democrats' necks in the midterms.

Taking the Civics Test

The test is here. I scored 93.94%.

Evidently, most people--including, I assume those unfortunate Obama voters who didn't know who controls Congress--didn't do so well.

Kevin Drum notes that everyone did badly, but Baby Boomers did somewhat better.

Other ISI findings, by the way, include these: the more education you have, the better you do; it doesn't matter much what kind of university you went to, whether you go to church, or what your politics are; watching lots of TV is bad for your score; and reading lots of history is good for your score.

That 50 Miles Makes a Huge Difference

In crime rate rankings, that is.

CITIES OF 500,000 OR MORE POPULATION (33 CITIES)

Lowest Crime Rate

1. Honolulu, HI

2. New York, NY

3. El Paso, TX

4. San Jose, CA

5. Austin, TX

6. San Diego, CA

7. Seattle, WA

8. Los Angeles, CA

9. San Antonio, TX

10. Fort Worth, TX

Ranking Highest Crime Rate Ranking

1. Detroit, MI

2. Baltimore, MD

3. Memphis, TN

4. Washington, DC

5. Philadelphia, PA

6. Milwaukee, WI

7. Indianapolis, IN

8. Dallas, TX

9. Columbus, OH

10. Houston, TX

Notice that New Orleans, even smaller, is still the worst. Hmm.

The McCain Campain Ads that Didn't Run

I haven't spent much time in Coulda Shoulda Woulda Land since the election because there's not much point. In a year with everything against him, John McCain did incredibly well (and had a real chance to win until the financial meltdown). But, as most conservatives were well aware, there were plenty of ads that should have been run but were not because everything (skinny, community organizer, Jeremiah Wright, celebrity) was racism.

What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show his coziness with celebrity? Or followed up on its Paris Hilton ad with others featuring Donald Trump and Jessica Simpson? All of that was on the drawing board of Fred Davis III, the advertising whiz that John McCain has used for almost all of his campaign media and one of the most talented conservative political operatives in America...

"My favorite ad of the campaign was as simple as it could be," Davis said. "And it started out something like, 'Long before the world knew of John McCain or Barack Obama, one of them spent five years in a hellhole because he refused early release to honor his fellow prisoners, while the other one wouldn't walk out of a church after 20 years of the guy spewing hatred towards America.' And the last line was, 'Character matters, especially when no one is listening.' " The ad never ran, however, because McCain ruled the topic of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the preacher of Obama's Chicago church, out of bounds shortly after he locked up the Republican nomination.

McCain's campaign was called racist from the get-go and don't think Obama didn't use fears of racism throughout his campaign, both against Hillary Clinton and John McCain. In fact, if times get tough, we'll be hearing that criticism of Obama as president is racism.

Davis says that concern about race played a major role in the entire aesthetic of McCain's ads. The photographs of Obama that the ads used, for instance, which often showed Obama elongated and smiling, were carefully selected, he recalls. "We chose them with only one thing in mind, and that is to not make them bad pictures because bad pictures would be seen as racist," Davis says. "How many shots in their ads did they use a John McCain [photo] looking decent and smiling?" He says the campaign also agonized over the music in the ads, paying special care not to play drum-heavy tracks that could be seen as an African tribal reference. "We were held to a totally different standard," he says.

The Affirmative Action candidate was held to a different standard. Will the Affirmative Action president be held to a different standard, as well?

Blacklisting?

Most students today learn about the evils of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist. The point, of course, is that taking away someone's livelihood because of their political beliefs is wrong.

So, where do all those Hollywood types, who are always telling us how Republicans want to bring back the age of McCarthyism, to defend those who supported Prop 8 in California? Seems like some want a return of the blacklist.

Other targets include Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that puts on both the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Spirit Awards; the Cinemark theater chain; and the Sundance Film Festival.

In Film Independent's case, the board has defended the continued employment of Richard Raddon, the Mormon director of the L.A. Film Festival who donated $1,500 to support Proposition 8. Cinemark is under siege because Chief Executive Alan Stock gave $9,999 to support the same-sex marriage ban. And in a sign of a powerful ripple effect, Sundance, perhaps the American institution that has done the most to support gay filmmakers and gay cinema, is being targeted because it screens films in a Cinemark theater...

Gregg Araki, director of the critically acclaimed gay cult hit "Mysterious Skin" and an influential figure in "new queer cinema," has said he won't allow his films to be shown there, while others, such as "Milk" producers and gay activists Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, say they're going to "study in depth all the facets of our specific situation before making a decision."

Araki says Raddon should step down. "I don't think he should be forcibly removed. The bottom line is if he contributed money to a hateful campaign against black people, or against Jewish people, or any other minority group, there would be much less excusing of him. The terrible irony is that he runs a film festival that is intended to promote tolerance and equality."

Many liberals hate it when you point out that free speech includes speech with which you disagree, and that if one actually supports free speech, it naturally means that you support others' rights to it. That means that I may not have wanted to see Brokeback Mountain or Milk, but I respect and support the right of others to do so.

This concept seems to be lost on much of the Left, who thinks that disagreement equals "hate speech" and such must be suppressed. They'll tell you that supporting traditional marriage is "hate speech" but wanting to alter marriage irrevocably is "tolerance." But I can't see anything more intolerant than telling someone that they don't have the right to support propositions with which they agree because some subsection of society has decided it's wrong.

From Jeff at Protein Wisdom:

(I)n order to make such a lynch mob palatable, the framing has to be manipulated to turn a disagreement over beliefs and public policy into something far more sinister — namely, “hate” or an abuse of civil rights.

But of course, the question of gay marriage is only a civil rights issue to most of those who support it; to most of those who support a ban on gay marriage, the issue is not one of civil rights or hatred at all, but rather one of public policy, a fidelity to the sanctity of the traditional definition of marriage, and (in some cases) a check against what they believe to be a legalized slippery slope. To others, the issue is, in fact, a religious one, insofar as it goes against the teachings of their church — but religion should only matter to marriages sanctified by a church.

The Left likes to talk in terms of "hatred" for this group or that issue, rather than support for some traditional notion of the subject. But the fact is that, while there are many homophobic people who, I'm sure, voted for Prop 8 out of hatred, there were far more who voted for Prop 8 because they believe the traditional notion of marriage--between one man and one woman--is the one they wish to support. Some may do this out of tradition. Some may do it out of a religious obligation. Some may do it because it makes the most sense to them. But regardless, it's not hateful to think traditional marriage is what we should be supporting.

On the other side, though, blacklisting is permissible as long as it only hurts certain people.

Obama vs. Catholics

Remember when pro-lifers sounded the alarm on Barack Obama's extremely pro-choice record? Remember the liberals who came unglued when I pointed out that Obama wasn't just for abortion before birth, but actualy thought it was permissible to allow babies who survived abortion to die? And remember when conservatives pointed out that Obama has promised that "the first thing he'd do as president" was sign the Freedom of Choice Act into law, which would sweep away all state restrictions on abortion, including parental notification, waiting periods and informed consent?

Well, I guess some people are finally beginning to realize what it means.

What in the world were these bishops talking about, claiming that religious freedom in America was under attack? Keep up the hysterics, boys, I thought as I scanned the latest story, and this will be birth control all over again: Your lips are moving but no one can hear you. And the most ludicrous line out of them, surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen, could it?

You wouldn't think so. Only, I am increasingly convinced that it could.

Like Catholic Charities in Boston, Catholic hospitals will simply shut down rather than be forced to perform acts against their beliefs. That's one thing about that Big C Catholic church: when they say abortion is murder and they won't perform them, they mean it.

Though it's often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn't stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn't be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute "material cooperation with an intrinsic evil."

Who would be the ones hurt if Catholic hospitals close? Why the poor, of course. The same people that we're told need taxpayer-funded abortions. I guess there are those who think no hospital is better than hospitals which don't kill inconvenient babies.

As the author points out, the good news is that FOCA, in this form, has not been voted on in 15 years, and there are a number of pro-life Democrats in Congress now. There's no way of knowing whether FOCA would even get sent to a President Obama for a signature. But that's the same thing we said about McCain-Feingold and we all know where that got us.

Plenty of Catholics voted for Obama on the appeal of "change" and a disaffection for George Bush and Republicans in general. Somehow, I don't think FOCA was the "change" they were believin' in.

LOL of the Day

Via Brothers Judd, this post:

The polling data on these voters released last week by John Zogby may have confirmed what many of us had suspected for months - - that millions of Americans who supported the Obama candidacy knew essentially nothing about him - - but that doesn’t dismiss the fact that Obama sold people on the idea of “change.” And based on the left-wing reaction to the Clinton re-emergence, “change” was taken to mean not merely a reversal of the past eight years, but an un-doing of the past couple of decades.

This has left-wingers outraged. Obama spent much of the past two years vowing to end the “senseless war in Iraq.” As he stood on stage with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for those seemingly never-ending Democratic debates, he took every opportunity imaginable to remind us that he was the only candidate who had always opposed the war in Iraq. Yet, now he may be about to appoint a “war supporter” to head up the Department of State. That’s not “change,” and it’s not hopeful - - at least not to those who have been caught-up in the Obama trance.

Similarly, Obama spent a lot of time and energy earlier this year brutalizing Mrs. Clinton in front of fearful blue collar workers, assuring them that “free trade,” and Mrs. Clinton’s previous support of the “N.A.F.T.A.” agreement, were the reasons that jobs were moving overseas and their futures were uncertain. He also assured voters that “N.A.F.T.A.” would be reigned-in when he became President. Yet now, Obama has appointed as his Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a man who, along with Bill Clinton, bucked the Democratic party’s wishes, and helped bring about the N.A.F.T.A. agreement in the 1990’s.

And then there is Obama’s selection of Timothy Geithner for Treasury. When the news broke last Friday afternoon that the New York Federal Reserve Chairman had been tapped for the new administration, Wall Street surged upward and ended in plus territory. Seemingly, Obama’s choice provided some calm and assurance to a financial world gripped with the fear that Obama would actually attempt to radically realign America’s economic structures, as he promised from the campaign trail.

Yet once again, Obama’s selection of a man who arguably has ties to both the Bush Administration, and the centrist policies of the Clinton Administration, is a slap in the face to those who were hypnotized by his campaign rhetoric about impugning “the rich.”

And after months of running against the “failed policies of George W. Bush,” Geithner’s selection painfully suggests to the Obamanicas that maybe, just maybe, Bush 43 wasn’t such a failure after all.

It would be reassuring if Obama were not the radical his past has suggested, but it will be way more fun watching liberals defending what they've opposed for eight years.

Why Aren't We...

Going after the lenders?

This discrimination is at the core of a number of lawsuits advocates have filed across the country over the last year. Several of the cases focus on a particularly devious practice: Without borrower knowledge, many mortgage brokers received a commission from the lender for persuading a borrower to accept a higher loan interest rate than what the bank was otherwise willing to offer. The lawsuits claim that such commissions were paid more often in loans to African-Americans and Latinos than in loans to whites, revealing, again, that lenders often charged borrowers of color more than their white counterparts. As these suits progress, and the groups suing gain access to lenders' and brokers' records—e-mails, internal memoranda, training materials, and other documents—we are likely to learn more about the practices of the lenders who are the defendants and about the industry in general.

Discriminating lenders were not the only problem with the housing market that courts should now address. Mortgage brokers rushed into poor communities with exotic subprime loans during the early part of this decade, because these communities were underserved by traditional banks. During the height of the market, nearly half of all subprime loans went through a broker, compared with only 28 percent of prime loans. Brokers also dominated loans made to borrowers of color: 64 percent of African-American borrowers used a broker, compared with only 38 percent of white borrowers.

The problem with this wasn't the mortgage brokers per se. It was that many prospective borrowers wrongly assumed that the brokers were working in the borrower's best interest. But in most states, mortgage brokers do not owe any duty to the borrower to find the best possible deal. Many brokers relied on borrowers' ignorance of the mortgage market to pursue higher commissions and other financial perks for themselves. In much of the country, there's no legal remedy for this. But a few states require that brokers avoid conflicts of interest and pursue the best deal for the borrower. These states include California, home to about one-quarter of the mortgages in the United States that are in some stage of foreclosure. The Department of Justice, the state attorney general, legal-services attorneys, volunteer lawyers, and law students should all be poring over California loan documents to smoke out the brokers who violated their legally mandated duties to their clients. If a significant number of loans in California alone could be altered, consistent with the borrowers' abilities to pay, either through litigation or its threat, the federal government wouldn't have to pay as much for a national bailout.

To date, none of the proposed homeowner-rescue plans acknowledges that a significant number of the homeowners who are in distress were the victims of predatory and illegal practices. Opponents of the plans currently on the table raise three serious objections: First, any massive loan rescue would be costly; second, borrowers in good standing might intentionally default on their mortgages to benefit from a bailout; and third, investors holding securities backed by subprime loans will balk at loan modifications that diminish their already depreciated investments and will sue to stop such efforts.

Going after the lawbreakers helps to address these concerns. It would not only lower the cost of the rescue plan by reducing the number of borrowers needing help, it would also direct assistance only to those people who were victims of illegal conduct and insulate the loan modifications from litigation by investors looking to preserve their investments. Investors won't challenge loan restructuring when the underlying loans were made on illegal terms. You don't lend your horse to Jesse James and then sue the stagecoach he robbed to get it back. Investors will have to redirect their fire from the borrowers to the brokers and lenders who did the fancy loan footwork—and perhaps the ratings agencies that blessed it.

There's been a lot of finger-pointing as to who is responsible for the subprime mortgage mess we're in. Democrats, specifically, deserve a very large helping of the blame, since it was their regulations that allowed and encouraged the sorts of lending practices that created this problem.

Borrowers, willing to believe in the Tooth Fairy, deserve another heaping helping of the blame. You can't believe that an interest-only loan is a good investment. I'm sorry, I don't believe that anyone is so ignorant as to not understand such loans on expensive homes are very risky. I think people took these types of loans knowing they would be kicked out in 3-5 years, but at least, they would get to live in a nice home until then.

But then there's the lenders, who were not merely compelled to offer loans to unqualified borrowers. They made the loans knowing they could shuffle them off to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and, eventually, the taxpayers. There was little or no risk in these situations, so why shouldn't the lenders make the most ridiculous loans possible? And just as the banks have used the bailout money to buy up other institutions, it's perfectly obvious that some businesses are not going to do the right thing now, just as they didn't do it before. Why aren't we pursuing criminal charges?

Lunatics on the Left

Liberals can be cute in that puppy-peeing-on-the-carpet earnest way they have about them, but then, you have the lunatics who think Iran is wonderful (even as they have to keep their heads covered because women are stinky, y'know) and the useful idiots who compare America with Hitler's Germany. Stop the ACLU has the analysis.

One question: what will these people do when Obama doesn't reverse all (or almost any, really) of George Bush's policies?

Forced Unionization and Bailing Out the Auto Industry

Bismarck sent me a link that went to this video:



I live in a right-to-work state, so, I'm always amazed when I hear about people who are forced to pay union dues, then watch the union use their money for candidates and positions they don't support.

Barack Obama is a big union supporter, and has promised to do everything possible to force companies to accept the unionization of employees (whether those employees want it or not).

All of this comes to mind while watching the Big 3 fat cats fly to Washington on private jets to ask for taxpayer money to bailout their companies...again. Regardless of how much more a worker for Ford makes versus a Toyota employee, the bottom line is that Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler aren't making cars people want. That's why they are losing money. I can't see why we should be on the hook for more terrible business practices.

Everybody Deserves a Trophy

Down in this comment thread, Thomas Tallis said the following:

Actually, the reason Democrats claim to want universal health care (most don't, or we'd have it already) is twofold - first, it would cost the country less in the long run and in the fairly short run; preventative medicine is much, much cheaper than the alternatives; second, the accusation that Democrats believe in a "nanny state" is partly accurate - Democrats are into the idea of taking care of people, that one of the jobs of the state is to care for its citizens. Whether 1) that's true or 2) desirable or 3) sustainable is something people can have an honest debate about. What's not open for debate is that this:

The reason Democrats want universal health care is because, like Social Security before it, it will shift an entire generation to the Left.
is one of the dumbest things I've ever read, and I've read a fair amount of dumb things. Congratulations on your totally unsubstantiated tinfoil hat conspiracy thinking! It's a riot!

I always like when someone tries to make their political party sound all altruistic, like it's not about getting votes by promising, oh, say, 95% of Americans are gonna get a tax break or something ridiculous like that.

The fact is, Democrats are always looking at ways to create more straight ticket voters, the sorts of voters who don't bother thinking about each candidate, but who reflexively vote for one party. Of course, Republicans do this, too, but given the fact that Democrats controlled the purse strings for the vast majority of the 20th Century, it's safe to discuss this in terms of their giveaways.

Social Security, the most successful entitlement program to date, made one generation beholden to the Democrats by eliminating most elderly poverty in this country. Of course, the fact that it was a Ponzi scheme and the Day of Reckoning is coming was irrelevant in the 1930s. FDR wasn't too concerned about my kids being forced to pay for all those people who thought having kids was a problem (and their old folks, to boot).

But to argue that universal health care is the latest way Democrats are trying to create a permanent Democrat voting bloc is neither original nor crazy. Just as each party will try to prevent Social Security reform when the other party is in power, universal health care has the same political risks. Whoever gets it passed will be a savior for at least a generation, until all the wheels start falling off and the engine stops running.

I could go into the reasons universal health care doesn't work and is, in fact, being changed because it is bankrupting most countries that have it, but I've discussed that before (see here, here, here, here, here, and here for a few examples). But the fact is, Americans think the idea of somebody else paying for their health care is a great idea. Most Americans don't have experience with socialized medicine and the downsides of it (say goodbye to new drugs and hello to 12 hour waits to see a doctor you didn't choose!), so they won't realize till it's too late that socialized medicine can be summed up in two words: it sucks.

How is it possible that we've gone from a large majority of Americans supporting private medicine (67% in 1998) to a similar majority insisting on socialized medicine (55% in 2006)? I suspect there are a couple of reasons:

1. Democrats have spent 15 years telling us we need universal health care and that Americans want it.

2. Everybody deserves a trophy.

What's that? You haven't heard of Everybody Deserves a Trophy? Then maybe you don't have kids in sports, where even the last place losers get trophies.

I'm using EDT as shorthand for the moocher class we've created in America, where people think they deserve something without having to actually do anything to get it. You see this in many areas in life, but we've now got a whole generation of 20-somethings who have been raised to think they deserve a certificate just for showing up (perfect attendance!). So, if people think they deserve praise just for existing, why not assume that the government is going to make all those tough decisions about things like retirement and health care, too?

Look, I've lived without health insurance and it sucks, there's no way around that. But the government already has programs to cover the poor, the elderly, and even children. The idea that able-bodied adults are not capable of either buying health insurance on their own or getting a job with benefits is ridiculous. My beef with the insurance industry is that once you'd had something like cancer, you couldn't even buy catastrophic insurance.

I could be a hardliner and point out that insurance shouldn't be paying for doctor's visits and pills, because doing that just encourages more of both. That's why most insurance charges some sort of fee for emergency room visits; people were (and still are) using the E.R. like their general practicioner. The fee keeps that down some.

But I'm not even going to go that far. I agree with rules that require insurance companies to offer insurance at reasonable rates (don't ask me what that is) for everyone. And I don't even mind mandatory insurance requirements, although it doesn't work very well for car insurance, as anyone who's been hit by an uninsured motorist knows. But once the government starts paying the bills, it will start telling you the kind of care you can get, when you can get it, and how much you get to have. That's called rationing.

In Everybody Deserves a Trophy land, it's just unfair that some people don't have insurance and that they might have to pay full price for their birth control pills. But one thing my experience has taught me is that pain (in the form of not having insurance) will spur you to change (we found a job with excellent insurance). Once the government offers health insurance, companies will stop, and that means that we all may get the same trophy, but no one will want that ugly, cheap, stinky thing on their mantle.

Happy Endings

Sent to me by an old friend:

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car?

Think before you continue reading. This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.

You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first.

Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back.

However , you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer. He simply answered:

'I would give the car keys to my old friend and let him take the lady to the hospital.

I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the partner of my dreams.'

Sometimes, we gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations. Never forget to 'Think outside of the Box.'

HOWEVER...

The correct answer is to run the old lady over and put her out of her misery, have sex with the perfect partner on the hood of the car, then drive off with the old friend for a few beers.

God, I just love happy endings!