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The price of luxury

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

CNN posted this sob story all over their front page yesterday:

When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.

It was Good Friday, and a woman helping her offered to pay her utility bill.

“It brought tears to my eyes, and I sat there and I cried. I was like, ‘This is really where I’m at?’ ” she told CNN. “I go ‘no way;’ [but] this is true. This is reality. This is the stuff you see on TV. It was hard. It was very hard.”

Reading a little further yields this nugget of information:

She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month.

What in the world is a single mother of two doing in a $2,500/month interest-only mortgage? This is the price of luxury. And CNN thinks we should feel sorry for these people? They’re suffering the consequences of their own choices. Nobody forced her to take such a horrible loan.

You reap what you sow.

Greenwald: Bush and McCain’s Shared Foreign Policy Approach

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 28th, 2008

From Glenn Greenwald:

On Wednesday, John McCain delivered what was billed as a “major foreign policy” speech and today, David Brooks gushed that it was “as personal, nuanced and ambitious a speech as any made by a presidential candidate this year.” In particular, Brooks said that the speech demonstrates just how different McCain’s foreign policy approach is from that of Bush/Cheney: “Anybody who thinks McCain is merely continuing the Bush agenda is not paying attention.”

The reality is exactly the opposite. Thematically, rhetorically and substantively, McCain’s speech, particularly as it concerned the Middle East, was essentially a replica of the speech George Bush has been giving for the last seven years. It trumpeted virtually every tenet of the neoconservative faith: to be safe, the U.S. must slay tyranny around the world, spread democracy, bring freedom to the grateful peoples of the Middle East so they turn towards us and away from the Terrorists, using “more than military force” — but also military force. We’ll only be safe by controlling and transforming the Middle East to look the way we want it to look.

McCain is a pure neoconservative in exactly the way that Bush and Cheney are, which is exactly why David Brooks, and like-minded ideologues like Bill Kristol, swoon over McCain’s foreign policy “principles.” That’s fine. Brooks is a neoconservative and it’s thus perfectly natural that he would find a neoconservative foreign policy speech to be filled with wisdom and insight. But to pretend that it’s some grand departure from the Bush/Cheney approach is pure deceit.

Continue to article

Here come the 49ers

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

Gold’s skyrocketing price (in dollars) has driven people to pick up the pan and fish for gold:

It has been almost 160 years since the first California gold rush but, with prices hitting record highs, prospectors are once again flocking to the state’s rivers and deserts in search of the precious metal.

Gold’s ascent – prices crossed the $1,000 an ounce barrier this month and remain well above $900 – has sent sales of mining equipment soaring.

“There’s been a dramatic change . . . our sales have risen four-fold in the last three months,” said Harrigan McGregor, owner of GoldFeverProspecting.com, an equipment retailer in northern California.

“This is the second big California gold rush. We’ve had a lot of phone calls from people who are quitting their jobs and prospecting full-time.”

The growth of prospecting by individuals has been accompanied by a sharp increase in commercial mining activity. Commercial claims, most of which involve gold mining, rocketed to 2,274 in the first quarter of this year, up from 132 in the same period of 2005, the Bureau of Land Management says.

Got gold?

California spiraling downward

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

The LA Times blog details a few notable trends in the California real estate market:

–Statewide, median sales prices fell by a stunning 26% from year-ago levels in February, with home prices dropping at a rate of nearly $3,000 a week, the California Association of Realtors reports. Further, the CAR says the Fed’s interest rate-cutting campaign “will have little near-term direct effect on the housing market.”

–In the San Fernando Valley, losing a home to foreclosure is now almost as common for families as buying a home. The L.A. Daily News: “During January and February, there were 1,084 foreclosures and 1,335 sales of houses and condos in Valley communities from Glendale to Calabasas, according to the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge.”

It’s definitely a buyer’s market. Still, houses in CA are two to three times the value of comparable houses in other areas. Like they say: “location, location, location”.

Zimbabwe and Israel

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

Not one to relinquish his power easily, Zimbabwean dictator Mugabe has apparently tapped the services of an Israeli group to work their magic on his behalf:

An aide of Zimbabwean presidential hopeful Simba Makoni has alleged that Israeli intelligence group Mossad has been hired by President Robert Mugabe to ensure he wins the upcoming election by hook or by crook.

…

He said that the opposition has been aware that Mossad had been active in Zimbabwe over the past six months and that two weeks ago six Mossad agents had arrived in Harare and held top-secret meetings with government officials involved in state security.

This is the latest allegation of vote-rigging levelled against Mugabe’s government.

Socialist healthcare and seniors

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

Daily Mail carries a story of a woman being denied treatment from the socialist medical system due to her age.

A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.

Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.

And people think that government-funded and -controlled health care in America is the best way to go? Maybe it’s just the young and healthy people clamoring for more intervention.

Treasury handing more power to the Fed

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

The NY Times details new powers the Treasury is hoping to hand over to the Fed:

The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.

The Fed’s role seems to be expanding as of late, going from banking oversight to a Wall Street stability operation

Welcome!

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

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