You can’t save energy! What will the neighbors think?? How homeowner’s associations are bad for the environment. The good news is that states and the feds can pass laws pre-empting neighborhood rules. In fact the feds did just that in 1996 over an issue of clearly overiding national interest, satellite dishes.
Um yeah, maybe we ought to refinance those before they all default and leave us holding the bag. That’s what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and WaMu (funny seeing them here) and the Mortgage Bankers Association are saying. I guess there’s somebody around old enough to remember the 1980s and the fallout from the Savings and Loan problems. It was years before they got all the property sold.
The Little Government Agency That Could. Be on the lookout for news in the coming weeks from the Office of Special Counsel investigations. It sounds like they are making a go at connecting the dots between Rove, Gonzales, the RNC, and just about every other rotten thing on the Potomac.
Waaah! The Lawyers are getting in the way! The government wants to limit attorney access to “unlawful combatants.” If they can actually make a judge see things their way, what exactly is stopping them from limiting Joe Average from seeing his lawyer if he is accused of a serious crime? All they have to do is say his lawyer is disruptive and poses a “security risk” the way I see it. Talk about a situation where I would be delighted to be proven wrong!
Boy, I wish I was average. Because apparently the average American has 25 electronic gadgets (guilty) and spends $1200 per year on more electronic gadgets.
All or Nothing. President Bush is really going to town on this illegal immigration thing. Yesterday’s radio address included bits like “We need a system where our laws are respected. We need a system that meets the legitimate needs of our economy. And we need a system that treats people with dignity and helps newcomers assimilate into our society… We must address all elements of this problem together, or none of them will be solved at all.” Today he told a graduation assembly that “the immigration system is deeply broken: Employers are not held accountable enough; borders are not secure enough; businesses need workers willing to do low-paying jobs; and the 12 million people estimated to be in the U.S. illegally cannot all be deported and so must be dealt with ‘without amnesty and without animosity.'” He then added “We must address all elements of this problem together — or none of them will be solved at all.” He really does have a black-or-white good-or-evil this-or-that way of looking at the world, doesn’t he? Hey, when you have a perfectly good meme going, stick with it. Good luck coming up with a bill that does all that without eroding the American workforce. Last I heard, the way to find workers willing to do low-paying jobs was to pay them more.
It turns out there’s some disagreement about the “timetable” for getting out of Iraq. Oh, I wasn’t talking about in Congress! I was talking about among the Iraqis! Now, interesting quote in this story from Presidential hopeful The Other Clinton,
“The first thing I will do upon taking office is to end the war in Iraq,” Clinton said.
So, for those of you playing at home, Mrs. Clinton thinks we will still have substantial troops in Iraq in January of 2009. And — follow me on this — that means she thinks both current efforts and any future effort before 2009 to end the war are Doomed. Now that’s what I call setting a timetable to surrender.
More American Terrorists. Except we aren’t calling them Terrorists, we are calling them Militia. Jill over at Brilliant At Breakfast sums it up nicely when she says “I guess you have to be dark-skinned, Muslim, and Really Really Scary-Looking to qualify as a terrorist in the eyes of this bunch.”
Food for Thought. The Baltimore Sun tells us that we import a lot more food than we used to and do proportionately less testing of it than we used to. The Indy Star outlines some of the reasons why.
And Finally…
Fist Full of Dollars. Now Katrina victims are being asked to buy (or at least pay rent on) their FEMA trailers. Let’s overlook for a few minutes that these people’s homes were destroyed over a year and a half ago and they are still living in trailers, despite the fact that it underlines how absolutely abysmal progress has been in rebuilding the area. Instead let me point out this section:
The hurricanes destroyed more than 200,000 homes, according to government estimates, including many apartments that have yet to be rebuilt. Louisiana recently announced that it had awarded $202 million in federal funds to help small landlords restore more than 5,200 rental units. With many fewer apartments available, rents along the Gulf Coast have soared, leaving many former residents of New Orleans unable to afford to return home.
Funny thing, when you try to replace 200,000 homes with 5200 apartments, scarcity results.
I wish i WERE average…