more housing stuff

Read it and weep.

I am officially at the shut the fuck up you selfish jackasses point. Srsly. That little article is a treasure trove of narcissism, displays of entitlement mentality and some very very scary hints of what's to come. For example, there's this:

Paul Willen, a senior economic adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, cited another group not helped by the plan: the newly unemployed.

This is not mentioned in the article but that sounded all kinds of alarms to me. I've had the sneaking suspicion that mortgage payments for the unemployed is just around the bend. Maybe I'm being a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but I see comments such as the above as laying the ground work for precisely that.   After all, we want people to move and get jobs right?  And people shouldn't have their dreams crushed because those evil people in the financial markets destroyed the housing market right?  Honestly, I would not be surprised in the slightest if straight up cash payments is the next step.

And this guy?  I want to punch in the face.

For Mark Klepper, 50, who lives in Miami, buying a big house was a way to establish credit to start a business. In 2004 he bought a home for $585,000, and watched its value rise to $1.4 million. After refinancing twice, he owes $1,064,000. But the home is now worth a little more than he paid for it, and his income has fallen by 40 percent. He stopped paying his mortgage in January. If he were to continue paying, he said, the drain would crush his business. The government’s plan does not help him.

“I feel if there’s a plan out there, there shouldn’t be a limit,” Mr. Klepper said. “If the government is helping these lenders, they need to take some principal write-downs.”

He asked his lender to reduce his balance to $600,000 and his rate to 4 percent, but so far has made no headway.

In less than five years he refinanced twice and nearly doubled his principal amount.  And now he wants a do over?  And I have to pay for it?  Yeah, no.

Going Galt is looking better by the second.

Posted by: alexthechick at 08:58 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Master of the Obvious here

Maybe it's just me, but this article strikes me as being a wee bit "oh my look at those quaint locals" while discussing the tea party movements.  Particularly since it starts with a slam on angryrenter.com.  Then there's this:

"There seems to be real bitterness about the idea of forcing people to subsidize the imprudent housing choices of their neighbors."

Shut.  Up.  No!  People are pissed about paying other people's mortgages?  No!  I refuse to believe that!

This is the thing, in all of these Flyovers In The Mist stories, the reporters seem to miss the wee tiny point that people *should* be pissed off about this.  Blah blah blah stablizing the banks blah blah blah stopping the fall of housing prices.  Spin it how you want, the fact remains that it is now economically better to not pay your mortgage than it is to pay it.  And people are rightly fucking pissed.

No wonder journalists are held in the same esteem as Congress and used car salesmen.  No offense to used car salesmen for the comparison.

Posted by: alexthechick at 01:00 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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What's the Matter With Thomas Frank?

Oh, I know, it's that he's a condescending leftist prick:

Just as the financial crisis has created toxic assets and "zombie" financial institutions, so has it transformed conservatism into a movement of the living dead. Its partisans cling to a now-toxic portfolio of discredited notions, rhetoric, gestures and strategies. They lumber comically on, their only goal being to obstruct efforts to save the economy from catastrophe.

Yeah, Tom, that's our only goal. It's not like we're trying to arrest the slide of our country into a Euro-style socialism. Or that we have ideological problems with plans to hike taxes during a recession. Nope, we're just obstructionist assholes, opposing Obama's massive spending just for the hell of it.

Later in his column, he attends a "Chicago Tea Party" in D.C. and is absolutely horrified to find a lot of angry people in attendance:

I got out of there quick. This was no place to find the changed, chastened conservatism that all the pundits are looking for.

All the pundits, yourself included, are morons. You were maybe expecting the people there to hold hands and sing? Maybe a stirring chorus of Kumbaya?  Sorry to disappoint you, dumbass, but people are angry about what's happening to this country.  But conservatives are supposed to be "chastened," whatever that means.

Oh, wait, I know what he means.  Something along the lines of "Grab your ankles."  No thanks.

Update: I should also note that when someone like Thomas Frank seems to think that there should be some sort of "chastened" conservative movement (in other words, abandoning our principles and shuffling ever further toward the mushy center-left) that should be a huge Red Flag, telling us to run the hell in the other direction.

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:13 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The Disconnect Between J-School And Working In A Newsroom On Display

As many of you know by now, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where the editor dropped the now-infamous "Decider" line, is going belly up. And as the curtain goes down, many of the folks there are writing blog posts on what is goin on.

Well, one post sent my irony meter through the roof. Food Reporter Rebekah Denn gave her notes from her intern days on how to be a good journalist.

Her advice?

more...

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Er, let me answer that by not answering that

I guess it's reassuring to know that Obama plans on cutting the deficit through money he wasn't planning on spending in the first place.  Although, somehow, I'm pretty sure credit card companies don't exactly work on this model. 

I mean, I don't know a hell of a lot about finance, but I don't think Visa gives you credit (as it were) for failing to pay your bill but still buying a new home theater surround-sound system afterward.  Damnit, I'm not even sure that that's what we're looking at here.  All I know is that we're screwed.  And this Orszag dumbass isn't helping.

Maybe we can put it on Mastercard instead.

Posted by: Sean M. at 06:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How Long Before KOS And DU Claim The DJIA Tanking Is A Conspiracy To Discredit Obama?

I mean, given the buffoonish attempts to create a conspiracy out of thin air over the Tea Parties and Santelli Rant, anything is possible.

Posted by: eddiebear at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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David Brooks Beclowns Himself (This Is Not A Recording)

Shock! He expresses disappointment in Obama.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

And then this gem:

Moderates now find themselves betwixt and between. On the left, there is a president who appears to be, as Crook says, “a conviction politician, a bold progressive liberal.” On the right, there are the Rush Limbaugh brigades. The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

 Yup. Let's allow Brooks, Noonan, Parker, Frum, Specter, Snowe, and Collins run the show. That should end well.

Posted by: eddiebear at 01:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Shocka! Moonbats Get Schooled In Their Conspiracy Mongering

It appears as though Playboy was thoroughly schooled by their Kos-like investigation of Rick Santelli.

And what did Hef's people do? They pulled the article.

But the following at the end of this Newsusters post is what I love:

Now, above I said "happily facts have won over Playboy forcing the mag to pull down the fallacious story" which is all well and good. But the problem is we now have hundreds perhaps thousands of left-wing DailyKosers and such all imagining they know the real story, the one that corresponds to the fake Playboy tale.

So, while the fake story has been scrubbed, the claim of conspiracy is still floating around like a noxious cloud befouling the air.

And, THAT, my friends, is how the left works. Scream the lie, whisper the retraction.

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The Only People I Care About In This Story Are The Convention Workers

But my cold, black, Conservative Heart, I laugh at the woes of the media. Especially regarding this story.

The American Society of Newspapers Editors' decision to skip this year's meeting was announced Friday, coinciding with the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News—the largest daily U.S. newspaper to shut down so far during a steep two-year slide in advertising revenue that's draining the life out of the industry.

"The industry is in crisis," said Charlotte Hall, president of the trade group and editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel. "This is a time when editors need to be in their own news rooms doing everything they can," to help their publications survive.

Until now, 1945 had been the only year that the American Society of Newspaper Editors didn't meet since the group's first convention in 1923. The newspaper industry weathered through 10 U.S. recessions since the last cancellation.

If it hadn't been canceled, this year's convention—scheduled from April 26-29 in Chicago—probably would have attracted a sparse crowd because so many newspapers are pinching pennies to ease their financial pain.

Newspaper staffs have been gutted, stock dividends have been suspended and, in the most extreme circumstances, bankruptcy petitions have been filed as more readers get their news for free from the Internet and advertisers curtail their spending on the print medium amid the recession.

Canceling the convention will likely result in some penalties to compensate the host hotel, the Fairmont in Chicago. The newspaper group is still negotiating with the hotel, Hall said.

The adverse economic conditions also prompted Magazine Publishers of America to cancel its convention this year. That decision was announced earlier this week.

The Associated Press Managing Editors still plans to hold its annual conference in St. Louis from Oct. 28-30, but has scaled back the hotel accommodations in anticipation of a low turnout, according to Mark Mittelstadt, the group's executive director.

"We will continue to watch the changes in the industry as well as the economy to see what steps and programming might be appropriate," Mittelstadt wrote in an e-mail.

The Associated Press Sports Editors remain on schedule to meet June 24-27 in Pittsburgh.

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"Worst economy since Hoover..."

Anybody remember that meme from the Bush years, the one every Democrat spouted at every press conference for years?  I've got to wonder why the GOP isn't out there declaring "worst economy since Hoover!" at every press conference.  Well, actually I don't, it's because they basically let the Democrats define what caused the market collapse because the GOP leadership is a bunch of invertebrates. 

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 09:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This Makes Me Glad I Only Read Playboy For The Nudity And Sex

And even that has gone downhill.

But, seriously, when Hef's writers start making the Kossacks and DUers sound sane, you know they are delving into weapons grade crazy.

So today's protests show that the corporate war is on, and this is how they'll fight it: hiding behind "objective" journalists and "grassroots" new media movements. Because in these times, if you want to push for policies that help the super-wealthy, you better do everything you can to make it seem like it's "the people" who are "spontaneously" fighting your fight. As a 19th century slave management manual wrote, "The master should make it his business to show his slaves, that the advancement of his individual interest, is at the same time an advancement of theirs. Once they feel this, it will require little compulsion to make them act as becomes them." (Southern Agriculturalist IX, 1836.) The question now is, will they get away with it, and will the rest of America advance the interests of Koch, Santelli, and the rest of the masters?

Wow.

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