The Housing "Crisis"

Our friends on Capitol Hill, in collusion with the Secretary of the Treasury and the President of the United States, have acted to address the housing crisis (or more appropriately, the financial crisis within the housing industry). I cannot even begin to address my disappointment with this bill and the conditions that necessitated its creation. So I'll let a friend's email to me speak to it:



"I’m a little surprised President Bush is going to sign this. I’ll tell you why I don’t like this one. When I signed (in about 30 different places on as many forms) my mortgage papers at closing, I gave my word that I would do all the things in the contract or risk losing my home (or more precisely, risk losing my ability to live in the home my bank owns and allows me to inhabit as if it were mine). So did everyone who bought a house. Even the ones who bought a house between January 2005 and June 2007, the period for which this bill applies. I am also guessing that nearly every person who bought a house had the opportunity to achieve sufficient education to be able to read what he or she was being asked to sign. My mother is one such person who did just that). My mother lives on a very modest retirement income. My mother lives within those modest means by making decisions that enable her to keep her word to the lender with whom she made the contractual agreement. And, yes, like many, she has had some unexpected expenses about which she was too stubborn to tell her children who could help her, and which she covered by going without medication for two months and by not driving her car and staying home except to go to church. She did that because the thought of defaulting on her promise to the lender was just not an option in her mind. She pays her taxes on time and in full every year. Yet those who signed their contracts with lenders either without reading them or with no appreciation that it was a written promise TO BE KEPT NO MATTER WHAT, those people will, courtesy of our elected officials in Washington, and after infrastructural pass through costs, get my mother’s taxes to get them out of their “unjust” mortgage arrangements. I know my critique of this bill may sound, may even be, cold-hearted, but if the Federal Government rewards that kind of behavior, will this nation, this culture ever lift itself out of its addiction to credit? Is it going to take another all out depression to change us? It’s as if the Declaration has been rewritten to include “…life, liberty and immediate gratification”. I’d say we are a nation of whiners but that didn’t work out too well for the last guy who said it."



Ok, back to my words now...sorry about the font shift, can't fix it. I'm actually not surprised the President is going to sign this bill. He's the "compassionate conservative" and gosh, isn't this bill so very compassionate? He's also the "ownership society" President, whose late 19th century view of man, land and dwellings has accelerated this incredibly selfish march into fiscal insolvency.

A couple of thoughts: home ownership as an investment is over-rated, especially when the average American homeowner has 60% of his wealth tied up in his home equity. This is not "diversification" and as the decline in housing prices has shown, this does not make fiscal sense.


The mortgage interest deduction is counter-productive, convincing people that they can have more house than they can possibly need or afford under the guise of "getting it all back" at tax time. The problem comes in meeting monthly obligations waiting for that IRS check.

I've come to decide that there should be a cap on the home mortgage interest deduction, to say, $15000 or so. After that, no one cares how big your mortgage is and the size of your house should not have an inversely proportional impact on your tax bill.

Finally, the whole "bail out Wall Street but not Main Street" crowd has got it all wrong. Of course it is a shame if a lot of people are foreclosed upon. Horror of horrors, they'll have to rent somewhere until they can get their acts together. If the big banks fail though, the whole economy slides into the tank. There just is no real comparison here.

George Bush, Manager-in-Chief

David Broder's column in the Washington Post this morning is a thinly veiled shill for a friend's book; that said, the friend's book gets at something that I think will be come more apparent over the course of the ten years or so that follow George Bush's retirement from office: that while some of George Bush's decisions have been questionable, the common portrayal of him as stupid, uninterested, detached or worse...simply doesn't cut it.

Like Dwight Eisenhower, much of what we know of the Bush Presidency will be revealed in the research that follows it. Eisenhower was treated as somewhat of an amiable dunce of an old man while in office. Scholarship that followed revealed the lie this was. Eisenhower was a master organizer who completely redrew the White House decision making mechanism to ensure he got decision quality advice so that he could make only the tough decisions.

Anyone I know who has worked closely with George Bush, and there are just a few, are quite open about his intellect and his personal influence over the workings of the staff. They say without hesitation that HE is in charge, that he sets the tone and tenor, that he has constructed the staff mechanisms to suit his decision-making style, and that he is a superb leader and manager.

The decision to go into Iraq on the cheap without sufficient inquiry into post-war matters will serve as the blackest of black marks against this administration. That said, it is not the whole story, and in the light of accumulated evidence, when Iraq is a stable nation and Al Queda (sp?) is an afterthought, people will be able to judge this Presidency in a fair manner.

Obama: Light of the World

I'm sure many of you have seen this, but it is one of the funniest things floating around the internet today....

Anglicans, Episcopals, and Homosexual Bishops

I am watching with bemusement the events at Lambeth, the Church of England's every-ten-year international convocation of member church Bishops. As you all probably well-know, the Episcopal Church in America is part of the "Anglican Communion" and as such, is a participant in the events at Lambeth. Watching the events from the sidelines is at least one Episcopal Bishop, Gene Robinson, relegated there by the Archbishop of Canterbury in order that his presence does not cause additional commotion due to his much publicized sexual preference. He is gay.

The Anglican Communion is being split by the US church's elevation of Robinson to the Bishopric. US Episcopals wear their liberality as a badge of honor, with Robinson's elevation (as well as their overall leader being a woman) seen as evidence of the church's adaptation with the times.

Let's face it; the Episcopal Church is leading the way toward relativism in American Christianity. They have looked at something considered amoral by Christians for two thousand years and have now elevated it to the status of that which should be celebrated.

While I am not at all in favor of using the Bible as a rule book, I've got to believe that there are some things in it that you just don't mess with, at least not if you wish to be taken seriously as a Christian denomination.

I have on occasion, engaged Episcopalians in discussions of this matter...when I wonder aloud if they would elevate a priest to the Bishopric who had been openly cheating on his wife, they are aghast. It seems only trendy sins are worthy of embracing.

Oh Great California, Save Us From Ourselves...

The Golden State has banned trans-fats, Arnold be praised. As someone who may soon be making monthly trips to California, I am particularly grateful that I will no longer be exposed to the evils of these molecular killers.

Each time we let the government takes something away, we become less worthy of the freedom we have.

Obama and the Military Hospital

I don't know what to think about this one, and I urge readers to keep their powder dry. It appears Senator Obama's campaign was warned off from a visit to recovering service members in Germany, as the DoD wanted to ensure that the service members did not become part of a political show.

Ok, I can certainly believe that this was the case. I don't however, believe that the Senator would have been in any way prohibited from making a private visit without campaign staff and reporters. From the perspective of the campaign, I think this would have been even a better idea than a fully covered visit, as it would have shown the Senator in a more sedate, serious and contemplative light.

Either way, Obama made a mistake here, and a junior varsity one at that.

"Oprah-fication" of Politics Rolls On

It seems as though Senator Obama's famous couch denizen supporter has had an impact on his campaign. The Senator's volunteers have taken to gushing their own personal stories on the campaign trail, in an effort to "connect" with others with similar stories. This kind of politics makes me a bit queasy, reducing great issues to "what's in it for me?" or "how has it impacted me?" What makes me even more queasy though, is that this kind of politics works in America.

CW is Big-Time Pro-Israel

I should probably let you all in on a serious bias of mine. I'm hopelessly Pro-Israel. I am prepared to debate all comers on this subject, but if you care to engage, I urge you to read your history. I urge you to become familiar with the creation of the State of Israel, and how the original UN mandate also created a Palestinian state. I urge you to read about the war that followed, as neighboring Arab states fought to destroy Israel rather than accept it as a cost for a Palestinian state.

I am well-informed as to the Zionist movement of the late 19th Century, and I know all about the activities of Zionists throughout the early 20th Century. That said, if the authority and legitimacy of the UN is to mean anything, the creation of the State of Israel was legal and legitimate.

The Palestinians have made a living out of victimization. Let's face it; calling entire cities with walls, streets, sewers, water and electricity "refugee camps" sixty years after their creation begs credulity. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, ladies and gentlemen, are the spoils of war! When Jordan, Syria and Egypt ganged up on Israel in 1967, they relinquished the right to complain when Israel annexed these lands to guarantee its own security.

Israel is a thriving democracy amidst a cesspool of craven dictators and plumed scions of lines long gone fallow. Anyone complaining about the influence of "the Jewish Lobby" on politics in the US simply doesn't understand US voters. The Jewish Lobby has no impact on me. Suicide bombers in pizza shops do.

That said, I am troubled by this latest move by Israel. I support a Palestinian state, achieved by Israeli remittance of lands taken in the Six Day War. I support such a state ONLY with serious signs by the Palestinians and other neighboring Arabs that Israel is legitimate and is not threatened. The only hope Israel has of achieving these goals is to cease building settlements in the occupied territory, moves which only serve to inflame the situation. I realize there are domestic Israeli politics afoot here, but this ceased to be an Israeli domestic question 60 years ago.

If the Palestinian question were solved today, the Arab world would quickly fall in on some other grievance to justify their cultural and political stultification.

Will Ferrell, Comic Genius

Will Ferrell has a new movie out, and it is unlikely that I will go to the theater to see it. Not that I don't like Will Ferrell, mind you. But for a grown man, a Will Ferrell movie is best enjoyed on DVD, by oneself or in the company of other suitably childish compatriots (a ship's wardroom provided an excellent venue). I have yet to run into a woman who completely "gets" his movies, and for the sake of my engagement, I do not hope to.

Who can forget the fight scene in "Anchorman"? Or Ferrell streaking down the street with his wife following closely behind in "Old School"? Virtually every scene in "Talledega Nights" is a scream, and his cameo in "Wedding Crashers" nearly stole the show from another childishly funny man (Vince Vaughan). On a recent flight, the man next to me had "Semi-Pro" on his laptop DVD, and I secretly watched the whole movie without sound...and chuckled to myself the whole way.

Let's hope Will continues to make great movies like this, and resists the temptation to segue into "real movies".

I Don't Like Robert Novak

Novak is a pompous ass (some would say I have special insight into such people). Today's paper has two stories in which he is featured, one in which he was cited in DC for striking a pedestrian with his, get this, convertible Corvette.

The other is this editorial. Novak, along with many Republicans in Congress, seem to think that there is some kind of great conspiracy out there to deprive men and women serving overseas of their right to vote. Obviously, Novak is interested because there is a common misconception that the military is conservative--and if conservatives are being deprived of their vote, well then, this can't be acceptable.

Novak simply doesn't know what he is talking about.

The officer corps is right of center, certainly more right of center than the general public. But officers make up probably less than 20% of the total number of people in uniform. Our enlisted ranks are far more likely to be centrist or left of center than the officer corps, sort of like you would see in the classic 1950's business model (management conservative and Republican, labor unionized and Democrat).

If there were in fact, a problem for military people to vote, solving such a problem would not necessarily be a benefit to Republicans.

That said, there simply is no systemic problem here. Anyone who has served in a leadership position in the Armed Services DREADS the election season, as we know that we will be subject to admonitions, exhortations, and direct orders all designed to make sure that we find some way for our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines to exercise their right to vote. Getting appointed as Voting Assistance Officer is one of the worst collateral duties a young officer can get, as no matter how well you do the job, there is no measurement designed to let you know you've done good enough.

Military absentee ballots don't get posted because the military is dominated by the same people who choose to sit out elections in the civilian world: young people. They simply have other things on their minds.

As for Novak, I propose that we conservatives work with liberals to make a deal; we'll see if we can get Novak to go away if they get Maureen Dowd to shut up.....

A Fellow Blogger, Silenced

Good story this morning about a young soldier in Iraq who set up an blog to keep the folks back home up to speed on how things were going for him. From the story, one gets the impression of a smart, dedicated, patriotic young man who had an obvious talent for writing. Short bits of the blog are contained in the article, and I must admit to thinking that this would have been a blog that got my attention.

That said, I am not a fan of open blogging by active duty military people. The military is there to protect free speech, not practice it. We take oaths, we take orders, we do our best to carry out all the lawful ones and we resist the unlawful ones. It is a dirty, grinding, often obtuse world into which very few civilians have the perspective necessary for sustained viewing. Irrespective of how truthful and entertaining 1st Lt. Gallagher was, his blog created a window just big enough into an often chaotic world for misconception and mis-perception to thrive.

I waited until I retired to unburden myself of these thoughts publicly. I'd prefer today's military do the same.

The Feminization of the Olympics

RANT ALERT: I am not a fan of what has become of the Olympic Games, or more specifically, how the Olympic Games are covered on TV. As a boy, what I saw was competition, moving from venue to venue in order to capture the thrill of competition no matter how fringe the sport was. Today, we are treated to another helping of what I refer to as "The Feminization of Sports" (see: Super Bowl Half-time Show).

In the Feminization of the Olympics, network coverage focuses in on certain competitors, providing excruciatingly detailed backstories of how this competitor had "overcome adversity" in his or her life. Usually accompanied by mandolin riffs and filmed with gauzy lenses, these human interest stories are designed SPECIFICALLY to attract female viewers.

Cable and the internet are helping to combat this trend by providing the networks with methods of serving the hard core sports fan that which he invariably seeks: competition. But woe be unto the ardent sports fan who happens upon prime-time network coverage. Be prepared to bring your Kleenex's.

Just once, I'd like to see an Olympic medalist address the camera and say, "You know, I've had it pretty easy. Mom and Dad loved each other, along with me and my siblings. I was always better at most things than everyone else, and I'm pretty much just a happy person." Surely one of these people exist?

The Tour de France

I am a huge fan of this event. Like NASCAR, technology and great analysis has helped to propel this once fringe event into something viewers can really enjoy. Given my antipathy to the sports that dominate this time of year (baseball (yawn) and the WNBA (chuckle)), the return of the Tour each year is something to be savored.

I would really like to see them drop their drug testing program though. Drop it altogether. The sport is rife with doping, and it is a farce to think that the top riders aren't finding ways to skirt the rules. I say, let them all dope! This way, no one can claim to be "playing by the rules", no one gets an unfair advantage. You wanna juice? Ok, but your body gets to pay the consequences.

The Surge is Working

Sorry to have been out of touch for a few days; back today with vengeance....


Probably one of the better summaries of the impact of the surge on fortunes on the ground in Iraq. I think the author is a bit too sympathetic to Mr. Rumsfeld et al, but the evidence is beginning to be too much for even liberals to ignore.

Joys of Air Travel

Yesterday's flight from Charlotte to San Francisco found me in the row in front of the exit row, and directly across from one of the three lavatories available to the unwashed in coach (the rows of seats across from me had been removed to accommodate the accommodations).

One must wonder why the tilt back feature of seats in front of the exit rows has been disabled. Do they really believe that the 3.76 inches of tilt are going to matter? It's not like these are business class seats that really recline.

And the joys of being near the commode...ah, lovely. Each opening and closing of the door revealing a new treasure of heavily perfumed air mixed with the toxic emissions of the previous occupant. If this were not bad enough, having to listen to the uber-banal chatter of those in line was enough to make one consider cross country car trips.

Pickens Plan

A reader pointed our direction to T. Boone Pickens' much ballyhooed new plan to vastly increase our dependence on wind energy and switch largely to natural gas powered vehicles. I like this plan, it makes a lot of sense, and it has potential. What's wrong with it? It ignores nuclear energy, it ignores domestic drilling, and it presupposes that huge tracts of land will be made available to the wind energy producers for their turbines. Putting aside the fact that Pickens has BILLIONS invested in wind energy (he seems to be every liberal's favorite oil tycoon now for his selfless switch to wind....they need to check their facts), thinking along these lines is healthy and required to diversify our energy supply. That said, the supply has to be really diverse, not just diverse enough for T. Boone and his heirs to profit.

Limited Action

Things could be light for a day or two here on the CW while I tend to some job interviewing in California.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

Great story on the cultural divide in this morning's paper. Apparently, residents along the Potomac River in Virginia's Fairfax County are strategically setting up duck blinds near their property in order to preclude actual duck-hunters from using them, as there are rules regulating the siting of such blinds. If the resident does not exercise their right, hunters have what is essentially a squatter's right.

Now, I don't have a strong opinion on this matter, but there are several issues at play. I am a fan of property rights, so I certainly would support a resident being able to preclude the construction of a blind on one's property. But we're talking here about areas clearly NOT the property of the resident, blinds that are sited in the river proper. I'm also a fan of sleeping late on weekends, and as someone who resides most of the time on a cove frequented by legions of waterfowl and the hunters who seek them, I can assure you that the volleys of shotguns in the morning--with the windows tightly shut--are enough to awaken one's latent Non-Combat Stress Disorder.

What I'm really interested in here is the conflict itself, and the means for its mitigation. I think it is crafty and underhanded for residents to place these blinds solely to deprive hunters of the right to do so. But I also think it is brilliant. I'm all over the map on this one, but since I don't have a stake in it, I'll just watch from afar.

"...Blowing in the Wind...."

Today's paper brings us yet another in a series of editorials extolling the virtues of wind and solar as sources of energy diversity for our country. Can we all just nod our heads and say, "Solar Good, Coal Bad" and get on with it? Yes, Mr. Tisch, solar and wind are great ideas, and I look forward to seeing them eventually begin to be scaled in a way in which real, usable power can be delivered to the grid in meaningful capacities. But we're just not there yet. And we'll never get there as long as Ted Kennedy doesn't want to see wind turbines from his deathbed in Hyannis, or as long as economically viable solar farms threaten the mating habitat of the fly-tailed dung beetle.

We have 104 nuclear power plants in this country producing nearly 20% of our electricity needs. Virtually every single site was surveyed to include room for growth. Yes, nuclear energy costs money. Capital costs to get a plant up and going are very high. That said, once the plant is up and operating, per-kilowatt costs are competitive with other sources...at capacities those other sources are simply not technologically ready to deliver.

Any discussion of energy security of this country must consider nuclear power if it is to seriously address the problem.

Whose Money is it Anyway?

Michelle Singletary writes a personal financial column for the Washington Post called "The Color of Money". Generally, it is a pretty good source of common sense financial advice for folks not in the stock options and buyout world. Today's column is off the mark though.

Basically, the column is a discussion of the merits of a plan put forward by left-leaning Center for American Progress and the Pension Rights Center, which advocates elimination of the option to borrow money from oneself within a 401K. This is yet another instance of the classic approach of the left to many social issues, and it is that the people of the US are not to be trusted with their own money. You see this played out in the whole issue of privatizing a portion of social security benefits. The rhetoric of the left comes down to one thing, and that is that the government has to protect people against their own bad decisions.

I don't buy this. If you build up wealth in a 401K, it is no different than any other asset. If you need cash for some other reason, it makes perfect sense to borrow against a 401K--as long as you pay the loan back. If you don't, you suffer the consequences...as it should be.